Lots of stuff this week: selling water to Kyle, food trucks, community gardens, parking lots, lawsuits, the Edward’s Aquifer, the murals around town, and so much more.
Much to discuss!
Hours 0:00 – 5:15: Some small rezonings, selling water to Kyle, a trail to New Braunfels, and an enormous amount of Land Development Code details.
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: the Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan, some impact fees, and the public art policy.
See you next time.
Citizen Comment:
Ten speakers. The two biggest topics are whether San Marcos should sell water to Kyle or not, and the Land Development Code.
Water to Kyle:
We’ll get to this in Items 4 and 5.
Land Development Code comments:
We’ll get to all these in Item 22.
Other comments:
Onto the meeting!
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Itsme 17-18: Crestwood retail center
This is the Crestwood shopping center, out on Old RR 12:
Back in 2022, it came up that their septic tank was old and degraded and leaking nasty sewage onto a driveway nearby. Gross! Council mentioned back then that the county hadn’t dealt with the septic system for four years already.
Now it’s been another four years, and the septic system is still a problem! Basically they need to get on the city sewer.
That’s what they’re here for, finally. Crestwood is getting annexed and zoned into the city. Great.
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Item 19: A little rezoning
There’s a little piece of property tucked away in this neighborhood:
Right now, it’s a pair of boarded up houses and an empty lot:
They’re going to redevelop it into four houses.
Note: people get really nervous about the word “infill”. The fear is that it’s a Trojan horse, and that if you allow “infill”, you’ll end up with a giant apartment complex in the middle of neighborhoods. (And sometimes that has happened! Developers can be jerks!)
But there’s also a good kind of infill: replacing two abandoned houses with four houses that families can live in. This is what we’re trying to encourage. This is good!
The vote: 7-0. Great.
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Items 4-5: Selling water to Kyle
This sounds really bad! It’s not quite as bad as it sounds. But against a background of severe drought and data centers and reckless development, anything water-related deserves some scrutiny.
So let’s scrutinize! What’s going on?
It’s two slightly different things:
Item 4: Kyle uses San Marcos water in an emergency. In other words, if a water main breaks, or if they’ve got fire hoses on full blast to put out a fire, they tap our water so that they can maintain water pressure for their residents.
It’s an emergency back up, basically. We’ve had an agreement like this for the past ten years, but it expired in November 2025.
Details:
In the past six months, they’ve used emergency water once.
Item 5: Kyle buys regular old everyday water from San Marcos, because they don’t have enough infrastructure yet to get enough water to their residents. The way it works is that we are allocated a certain amount of water from Edward’s Aquifer. We generally don’t use it all, so we sell them our unused Edward’s Aquifer water rights.
We sold them water back in 2023, and then again in 2024. (We might have done it earlier than 2023, but I wasn’t blogging yet.)
Kyle knows they’ll go over their allotted amount of Edward’s water rights, but they don’t yet have infrastructure to get enough water to the parts of the city that need it. Supposedly the infrastructure will be finished in 2028.
(For the record: back in 2023, they were sure the infrastructure would be finished in 2025. Just saying.)
So they need to buy Edward’s Aquifer water from someone. We generally go under our allotted water, so we sell the water rights to them.
Details:
Here is the big question: why is this happening? Is Kyle being irresponsible and allowing development that it can’t supply with water? Does Kyle allow its residents to be irresponsible with water? (Are we the most virtuous neighbors ever?)
Answer: We can’t really answer any of those questions satisfactorily.
Here’s what we can say: There’s a clause in both contracts that Kyle’s drought restrictions must match or exceed our drought restrictions.
That doesn’t entirely solve the problem, of course. Drought policies say things like, “Residents can’t fill their pools or water their lawns on Thursdays.” They don’t say things like, “Council should not approve a new development here, because the city lacks the water.”
Also, the two drought ordinances are tricky to compare, though. They don’t line up as neatly as you’d like. Also, Kyle is planning on revising their Water Conservation and Drought policy in the next month or two.
Bottom line: We agree to one year of emergency water, and postpone the Edwards Aquifer rights, until Kyle revises their drought policy, so that we can compare apples to apples, and decide how virtuous they are.
This should come back over the summer.
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Item 21: Four police parking spots downtown
Last year, things on the square got disturbingly violent:
In response, SMPD is trying to ramp up its presence downtown. Texas State also kicked in some money to help cover the extra police time.
So officers have been parking in these four spots:
Starting in December, we reserved those parking spots for police cars only, so that cops can park there while monitoring the bar scene.
However, we also don’t want to take away daytime downtown parking spots! So they’re trying to thread the needle: these spots are public parking during the day, and then at night it becomes SMPD parking. (It’s like the Hannah Montana of parking spaces.)
The tricky part is trying to explain that in the parking signs. Here’s an example, the one on Hopkins:
Great. By day, you’ve got the two green signs. By night, you’ve got the red. (Not pictured: an extra sign with an SMPD number to call if you get towed.)
The downtown businesses are very happy with this! They like having the police presence downtown.
This has been a trial run. Does Council want to make these spots permanently designated?
What does council say?
Lorenzo: This is a mess. It’s too complicated. Why not just dedicate the spots to SMPD, day and night?
Amanda: I don’t want to remove them during the day, because of parking shortages.
Jane: What if we stripe them?
Josh: People will learn the hard way.
Alyssa: Are people learning? How many people have been penalized?
Answer: In the past three months, there have been 3 citations, 1 warning, and 10 cars towed.
Also SMPD says: We actually tow a ton of cars downtown. Ten cars towed is barely a drop in the bucket!
The vote: 7-0.
Spots will now be permanent! From now on, it’s green-by-day, red-by-night.
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Item 22: Back to the Land Development Code
We last discussed this here and here. Last time, Council got about halfway through their amendments. Now we’re going to wade through the rest of them.
This item is super long. Sorry! Buckle up.
New Amendments:
1. Clean sidewalks
How far out should restaurants have to keep their sidewalk clean? 50 ft or 100 ft?
Answer: Council goes with 50 ft.
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2. Food trucks downtown.
This is actually two different issues.
First food-truck issue: San Marcos only allows 14 bars downtown. Each bar has an alcohol permit. Everyone else who serves alcohol downtown is technically a restaurant, and they have a different alcohol permit that requires them to serve food.
This is one of the (many) reasons that the Rooftop got in trouble last year. They weren’t serving any food last summer. After they got in trouble for this, they added a food truck.
The question: Is a food truck enough to make a bar feel like a restaurant, for purposes of the alcohol permit?
Amanda: Yes. Look at Zelick’s – it feels like a restaurant, because people are sitting at tables and eating.
Jane: What if the food truck operator gets sick and they don’t show up one weekend?
Lorenzo: Then the business would be out of compliance if they tried to serve alcohol.
Jane: That is naive!
The vote: Should food trucks count as restaurants for purposes of establishments that need to sell food because they have a restaurant-alcohol permit?
Yes: everyone
No: No one.
(Later on, Jane spends a LONG time being mixed up on what exactly they voted on. She and Matthew might have actually intended to vote “no”. But they don’t re-open the vote.)
Food Truck Issue #2: What if you have a food truck that just sells alcohol and no food? Like a margarita truck or a beer truck? These exist – we have one at the outlet mall. Are these allowed downtown?
Lorenzo: Every bar permit has a fixed address. So a bar truck would need to get an alcohol permit and could only sell alcohol at a fixed address, right?
Answer: yes.
The vote: Should Bar Trucks be banned downtown?
So bar trucks are not allowed downtown.
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3. Data Centers: Last time they didn’t quite nail down the definition.
Staff came back with this suggestion:
This passes.
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4. The Waiting Period Loophole: Amanda wants to close this.
Backstory: Say you want to build a development, and you apply to get the land rezoned. Council votes you down. How long do you have to wait before you can try again? It depends!
Here’s how the loophole currently works:
Situation 1: A vote to approve your rezoning fails.
Situation 2: A vote to deny your rezoning succeeds.
These sound like the same thing, but they aren’t the same. Situation 1 means no waiting period. The developer can zip right back to the city office and reapply. Situation 2 means the developer must wait a year before they can reapply.
This is super misleading! Council deliberately uses this when a project is unpopular, but Council still wants to pass it. They’ll vote it down, but then give developers a backdoor to reapply.
(This is what happened last August with the data center. Predictably, everyone got super mad and confused when there was no waiting period.)
Amanda makes a motion to close the loophole. Both Situation 1 and Situation 2 would require a waiting period of one year.
Jane: Council uses the loophole! Sometimes we want something to come back!
Nobody ever seconded Amanda’s motion, so it doesn’t come to a vote.
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5: Gardens and farms
Amanda: Allow community gardens, urban farms, and plant nurseries all over San Marcos.
Specifically:
Matthew has opinions: “I am going to vote yes, but I want to go on the record for being against community gardens in single family neighborhoods! I have seen the damage they can do!”
Matthew has seen community gardens:
and he watched some rotten shit go down.
(“Rotten shit” is basically the point of a compost pile, so maybe he just misunderstood.)
Anyway, the vote: 7-0. Great!
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6. Four and five bedroom apartments.
Right now, there’s a rule that you can’t have an apartment with more than three bedrooms. You can have a house with four bedrooms, but not an apartment.
Why is this? What’s the problem with a four-bedroom apartment?
This was the argument: “We have to get rid of four-bedroom apartments, because landlords use them for rent-by-the-bedroom. We’ll only allow with a special permit, in purpose-built-student-housing.”
This has always been insane. Lots of people besides college students need four bedroom apartments! What if you have a family with three kids? What if the family has two kids, and a grandparent, all living together? What about coop living? What about people, generally, trying to share expenses and live together to save money?
Furthermore: wealthy people get to buy 4- and 5-bedroom houses! Why would no one else need this?
Historically, powerful people in San Marcos have cared a lot more about micromanaging students than about the unintentional consequences on poor people.
So this is Amanda’s amendment: let’s fix this.
The vote: should developers be allowed to put 4 bedrooms in a small multifamily, courtyard housing, or multifamily?
Jane opposes it because of parking. She’s worried that if you allow 4 bedroom apartments, you won’t have enough parking spaces for everyone.
However, parking is actually based on the number of bedrooms unless you’re downtown, and downtown is the one place that already has 4-bedroom units. So her argument does not hold water.
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7. Professional Office Space
Right now we’ve got some super weird rules about these:
Got that? No upstairs offices, ya dirty crooks! And don’t you dare try to be mid-block, away from an intersection. You think we were born yesterday?
Amanda proposes that we nix all of these. Staff agrees – they meant to get rid of these, because they’re weird and restrictive, but missed this instance.
Alyssa: I’m a night owl. Can we scrap the 6am-11pm part, too?
The vote: 7-0.
(They did not yet scrap the 6am-11pm part.)
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8. Maximum parking.
Let’s talk about parking lots. Basically too many parking spots and too few parking spots are both problems.
Too few parking spots mean that it’s hard for customers to find places to park. Too many means that your parking lot is huge. You’re paving too much of your city. It’s bad for flooding and walkability.
So if a business really wants an extra large parking lot, they’re required to do some mitigation:
Wouldn’t that make a big difference at Target or Walmart?
The question is: when does this kick in? How much wiggle room should we give you to provide extra parking?
Amanda’s amendment: “Extra Parking” means 30% above what’s required. If you’re required to provide 100 spots, and you provide 130, then you have to think about shade and solar panels and permeable pavers.
The vote:
Matthew voted no, because he speaks for the trees the floods. When no one else has the courage, he speaks for the water and the mud that just want to be inside people’s houses.
Matthew speaks for the hot asphalt! for the smelly melting tar! In this busy modern life, Matthew remembers.
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That’s everything that got voted on, officially.
Other discussions – no vote
Most of these will be formalized and voted on in June:
This is mostly about data centers, but not entirely.
Should city staff put the signs up, or should the applicant put the signs up?
Right now, it takes a supermajority to overturn P&Z. Sometimes when P&Z does something especially stupid (like ban live music at Tantra) it seems dangerous to give them so much power.
Should Council be able to overturn P&Z decisions with a regular majority, instead of a super majority?
My $0.02: This has come up before, in 2022. I was opposed to weakening P&Z then, and I still am. It’s a dangerous sign when a governing body weakens the checks-and-balances that are supposed to put some friction and dissonance in the system.
If P&Z can be overruled with a simple majority, then P&Z does not actually hold any power. They just make recommendations. And I’ve been around long enough to have seen it swing the other way – a wiser P&Z and a more foolish rogue City Council.
P&Z may occasionally make some dumb-ass decisions, but I generally think the principle of checks and balances is wise, and should not be weakened.
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Right now, developers have to submit environmental studies, to make sure they’re not going to cause a lot of flooding or poison the river, or something. Part of that is a Qualified Watershed Protection Plan. This gets presented to P&Z. This gives other groups – like the San Marcos River Foundation – a chance to listen and make comments, in case there’s a concern.
However, apparently it makes the whole development process stall out for 6 weeks, while they wait to get on P&Z’s calendar. This costs developers a lot of money, which drives up everyone’s costs.
The question: can we find a way to make the study available to the public, without wasting 6 weeks of everyone’s time?
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This zoning is not very walkable nor part of a “complete streets” dream where everyone can get their basic needs met without driving.
Discussions that will be continued, but not as Land Development Code amendments
I hope these don’t get shelved. They’re very important
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THAT’S THE WHOLE THING!
They vote: 7-0.
This was just a first reading. This will come back for a final vote in June!
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Item 23: Housing Finance Corporations
HFC stands for Housing Finance Corporations. These started off as legitimate attempts to create affordable housing, which then got hijacked by scammers.
It’s supposed to work like this: San Marcos or Hays County partners with a nonprofit. The nonprofit gets a tax waiver in exchange for building affordable housing.
The problem is something called “travelling HFCs”. Can a city 200 miles away partner with a nonprofit, and they build housing in San Marcos? So San Marcos doesn’t get the tax money, but they never agreed to anything? The housing may not even end up being affordable.
So here’s what happened to us: Pecos is a city here:
The city of Pecos partnered with the Pecos HFC, and built (or bought) The Grand at Stone Creek. This is the apartment complex between Academy and Crunch Fitness, near Target. They also had complexes in Kyle and Hays County (and a ton of others throughout Texas).
This was costing us about $200K in property taxes. We don’t know if they actually offered affordable housing or anything.
Anyway, we won! Or we settled. But we got the outcome we wanted, which is the tax money, plus a little extra in legal fees.
There’s 1-2 more HFCs that are still tied up in lawsuits, which will hopefully also tip our way.
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Item 24: We’re building a trail to New Braunfels!
Or rather, we’re applying for Federal land along Hunter Road to build a trail.
The goal is to put a hike-and-bike trail here:
So that’s cool! It sounds like it’s supposed to tie in to a much bigger thing, here:
The Great Springs Project, apparently.
Great!
Citizen Comment:
Two people spoke:
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Workshop 1: Incidental Take Permits
Here is the Edward’s Aquifer:
The green part catches all the rainfall. The light blue part is all the porous caves and springs, where the aquifer is right at the surface. The dark blue part is the storage tank of the aquifer.
The water only pops up in two places: the San Marcos and Comal rivers.
In 1991, the Sierra Club sued the US Fish and Wildlife Service, for not protecting the endangered species in these rivers. They won the lawsuit, and the Edwards Aquifer Authority was created with legal status to protect the flow of these two rivers. (Here is all the history you might ever want to know, and then some.)
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So the Edwards Aquifer Authority’s job is to keep the rivers flowing. They are required to have a plan, and the plan has to get approved by the US Fish and Wildlife department.
The old plan is going to expire in 2028, and so we’re working on the new one:
“EAHCP” stands for Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan.
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A big part of the new plan is the Incidental Take Permit:
Incidental Take Permit means “you’re going to disturb the endangered plants and fishies, so let’s plan to do it legally”. Otherwise you could get sued.
Here’s the things you might do that would be bad for endangered species:
The biggest thing is pumping water out of the aquifer.
Here’s who gets permits to pump water:
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Next up on the ITP: making sure recreation on the San Marcos River doesn’t hurt the protected species.
Here are the specific activities we want to allow, in the EAHCP:
Here’s the type of thing EAHCP has done, so that people can swim without destroying the river:
They built the steps on the left, and fence off the stuff in the middle.
So we used to have a barren bank, very bad for the river, on the left here:
and now we have nice steps and a protected, healthy river bank. Hooray!
San Marcos is expected to also do some work:
Basically:
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The plan lays out how to measure whether or not the river is healthy enough for the species to survive.
They have to measure a bunch of things:
For example, here’s some of the goals for springflow:
Average flow of the San Marcos river is 175 cfs (cubic feet per second). Right now it’s about 90 cfs. It’s been about 90 cfs for the past few years.
The absolute lowest that’s okay is 45 cfs, and only if it doesn’t stay that low for very long. I can’t imagine the river only having half as much water as it does right now.
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What’s the plan when the river gets low?
The Edwards Aquifer makes everyone cut back on pumping during a drought:
So San Marcos normally gets 5433 acre-feet per year. But if we were in a Stage 5 drought, we’d only be allowed to use 3042 acre-feet.
So that’s the blue line at the bottom of this chart: the amount of water that we’ll always be guaranteed to get from the Edwards Aquifer.
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I might have misunderstood this next part. I think the Edward’s Aquifer Authority is going to buy back 100K acre-feet of water, and then use that to protect the river when it gets low.
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Here’s another goal for the river:
they measure the amount of endangered plants, and plant more good plants, and remove more bad plants.
So we also have to take care of the plants:
They measure the animals:
Listen: if I hadn’t been listening to the presentation, I might have been freaked out by the photo on the top right. Doesn’t that guy look a little spooky, laying facedown like that?
They also raise the endangered species outside of the river:
in case of some natural disaster.
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In total, here are all the conservation measures that San Marcos and Texas State University are supposed to implement:
It’s mostly things we’ve already been doing, under the old plan. They help us fund these, too.
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So how much does this all cost?? It is expensive! About $28-30 million/year.
Cost of water rights will probably go up over the next 30 years, to pay for all this.
What does Council say?
Josh: How much does it cost to put this plan together?
Answer: Mostly staff time. About $2 million in grant money.
Amanda: Is the city already able to hold up our end of the bargain?
Answer: Yes, we contract out a lot of the conservation measures. It’s a lot of continuation of what we’ve been doing.
Jane: You say that we need to controlling access during extremely low flow events. What do you think this will look like?
Answer: There are a lot of unknowns. Could be paid access, parking access, might depend on what locations have been degraded. River hasn’t been at 45 cfs since the 1950s.
Jane: Are the fences along the banks less ugly?
Answer: Yes, they’ve been replaced with more aesthetically pleasing black fences.
Jane: We’re trying to stop promoting the river to tourists. Like the TxDot sign on 35 advertising river recreation.
Answer: It’s hard to get them to take their signs down.
Conclusion: We’re going to have a future conversation about how to downplay the river to tourists. Especially since water is such a big topic these days.
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Workshop #2: Water and wastewater fees
We’re going to be raising impact fees later this summer. This presentation is mostly informational.
What’s an impact fee?
Great. This presentation is specifically about water and wastewater fees.
Developers only pay impact fees new developments. Nothing existing is going to have to pay any of these fees.
Here’s the past history:
Great.
There are rules for impact fees:
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You can only charge an impact fee in your service area. So here’s where we can charge impact fees:
and here’s where we think people are going to build:
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In order to compute impact fee rates, they need to know two things:
Let’s take those one at a time.
First: total cost of projects:
So they know where the growth is expected to happen, and so they can map out what kinds of water and wastewater projects will need to be completed so that all the new homes and buildings can get water impact.
Second: how many developers will be sharing the costs?
You want to charge them different amounts, according to how big the development is. So we go according to meter size.
Here’s how we translate meter size into number of homes:
In other words, we assume a 10-inch meter is equivalent to 350 homes.
After doing all that conversion, here’s the total number of “homes” that we’re providing water to:
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So that would give the city what they need to compute the new impact fee rates:
Actual proposed rate hikes will come in June and July.
Council questions:
Josh: How do we compare to neighboring cities? Are we scaring off developers?
Answer: We benchmark with neighboring cities. We’re in line. It basically depends on how recently they’ve updated their impact fees. If they’re still going on 2015 rates, we’re higher.
Amanda: Do we incentivize reducing impact? Do we have reward programs for water re-use?
Answer: We’ll take this input and get back to you.
The city has a big reclaimed water facility. It doesn’t produce drinking water, but you can use it for cooling and irrigation. We run “purple pipe” to a bunch of places, like the Kissing Tree golf course, the power plant, the downtown plants, and some parts of the university.
Shane: What if they use reclaimed water. Does the purple pipe give a discount or anything?
Answer: No, it’s an entirely separate thing. This is only clean drinking water. It means they use less water, though, so that reduces their costs.
Lorenzo: Does the university pay impact fees?
Answer: Yep.
This is important, because the university skips a lot of local taxes, in general.
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Workshop 3: Public Art Policy
In the last 20 years, we’ve put up way more public art!
There are a lot of decisions about what gets funded and where it’s located. How should we be transparent with the public on how these decisions are made? We need a Public Arts Policy.
We already have one, but it’s old:
For awhile it was just donations. Then around 2018, we commissioned the mermaids statues and Big Wavey:
Since then, we’ve gone on to do a lot more.
Some are big, like this mural behind Industry:
and some are little, like these traffic boxes:
I really love that traffic box.
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Here’s the program that commissions and maintains these public art pieces:
So we’re trying to lock down some details and create a more formal Arts Policy. It’s going to cover things like: how do we maintain art? How do we approve things? How do we ensure these things sustain after we’re gone?
This is the planning stage.
Council questions:
Amanda: If we’re collaborating with a private organization, how are they consulted?
Shane: What about the public?
Answer: We hold lots of meetings with the collaborators, and at least one public meeting, unless it’s a super small project.
Alyssa: It’s great that we’re getting a reputation as a creative community.
Shane: What happens if someone tags a mural?
Answer: Murals actually prevent graffiti. People are less likely to tag murals. When it happens, we remove it or work with original artist to repair the mural.
Jane: What about murals on private buildings?
Answer: We go in halvsies. They have to keep it up for at least five years.
Then we get to The Big Conversation:
Jane: For major art, I want it to come to Council. I’m so embarrassed that we omitted the rattlesnake on the big mural, but we have a bobcat.
Jane is talking about this:
You see this mural as you’re driving on LBJ from I-35 towards downtown.
It makes Jane lose her mind every time, because there is a bobcat:
which obviously represents Texas State, but there is no rattlesnake in the mural, to represent SMCISD.
Jane is so upset about this mural that she wants a line-item veto on every major art piece that comes through San Marcos, because if she’d seen this design, she’d have asked, “Where’s the rattlesnake?”
I happen to totally agree with her – that mural needs a rattlesnake. However! Council should not have a line-item veto on artwork.
Listen: Edge cases make bad policy. If you have a single unusual bad situation, it’s going to have a lot of unique aspects, and you should not write general public policy with that case in mind. (And in fact, the very next time a mural came around, Jane tried to apply the lessons of the bobcat mural standard. She tried to ban a cactus painting for being prickly. It was a total mess.)
Staff: Best practices is that council and community provide the prompt up front, and give them what to go by.
Jane: That wouldn’t have saved the rattler problem. I want to see the art before it’s too expensive or too hard to change.
Shane, Matthew: YES!
Josh: We could make a list of ten principles! Artists could be required include three of ten!
(Note: oh god, this is how you end up with bland mush.)
Jane: Nope. I want to see the art and proofread it to make sure there’s a rattlesnake in it.
Amanda: Art is super subjective. We don’t want to tie the hands of the artists.
Josh: I don’t want to weigh in on art.
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So what went wrong with that mural? Here’s the process of how murals are designed:
With that mural, the artist included every single thing that was mentioned in the community meeting.
City staff: And actually, it was not a Texas State bobcat. It was an actual bobcat, like a wildlife thing.
(Note: the bobcat is literally standing in front of Old Main, so I’m pretty sure it’s a Texas State bobcat.)
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Alyssa: No. I don’t trust our judgement. Don’t you all remember our insane Gateway Sign discussions? We have terrible instincts. Leave it to the experts on the Arts Commission.
Josh: does the arts commission weigh in on highway signs?
Answer: No, that’s graphic design. It’s art but also functional.
(Apparently all the council members have gotten a lot of phone calls from community members who hate the gateway signs.)
Jane: Do you all know WHY we even have an arts commission?
Amanda: I don’t.
Jane: It was my idea!
Shane: in 1821.
Jane: it was 1998. I was on CDB, we were asked to do a lot of art design, and I was like, “I’m not qualified. We should have a commission.” Boom, you’re welcome.
Bottom line: they’re going to probably get to micromanage the art. We’ll see what the next draft of the Arts Policy looks like.
Hidey ho, Neighborino! We’re back. Will Council regulate data centers? Will this grandmother in Dunbar get her home repair nightmare resolved? (Seriously, her story is awful.) Get your zesty details here!
Let’s go:
Hours 0:00 – 5:07: Forming our policy on Data Centers, annexing Five Mile Dam parks, loopholes for downtown restaurants, and a total home repair horror story in Dunbar.
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: the yearly homeless Point in Time count, and the Homeless Action Plan that has been implemented by Southside over the past two years.
See you in two weeks!
Citizen Comment:
By the numbers:
(I just pooled them all together here.)
The biggest theme of the night: Data Centers in the Land Development Code. (5 speakers during Citizen Comment, and another 19 at the public hearing.)
Roughly speaking, everyone said: “When you revise the land development code, either ban data centers altogether, or at least regulate them tightly. They’re terrible and we hate them.”
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Side note: several speakers had spent their morning at the Guadalupe Commissioners Court. Guadalupe County approved a whole package of tax breaks for a Cloudburst Data Center on 123, despite listening to four hours of public comment about how much everyone hates them.
To put it mildly, this smells corrupt. The only argument in favor of a data center is the money. There is zero upside to giving a data center tax breaks.
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Back to citizen comment. Non-Data-Center thoughts on the Land Development Code:
Note to Council: I strongly agree with keeping tree requirements. Developments without trees age really badly. We are talking about farmland, east of 35, which is also the more economically vulnerable side of town. If you allow developers to skip the trees, then the residents’ homes will not gain as much value over the years, the way it would on the west side.
We need a tree canopy in Texas to make the summer tolerable. You absolutely must require tree planting, unless the developer is putting in actual xeriscapes. (I’m okay with a xeriscape exception.)
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Other comment topics, unrelated to the Land Development Code:
Onto the meeting!
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Item 9: Five Mile Dam Park
Back in November 2024, the city bought Five Mile Dam parks from the county. This is where the youth soccer leagues have all their games:
The idea was that we didn’t want the county to privatize the soccer fields, and the county would only let us buy the soccer fields if we also took these two Blanco River parks:
This is the Blanco River, but the river runs underground and so the river bed often looks dry.
The county charged us $0, because they REALLY did not want those parks any more. (Presumably because of upkeep and liability.)
Readers, meet Dudley Johnson:
and Randall Wade Vetter:
Dudley Johnson, Randall Wade Vetter: meet my readers. Go say hi. You’ll get along beautifully.
Anyway, Dudley Johnson Park and Randall Wade Vetter Park now belong to the city, and so at Tuesday’s meeting, we formally annexed them into city limits.
Note: According to the deed, the land will stay parkland forever. Go enjoy it.
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Item 11: Amending the Land Development Code
We update the Land Development Code every few years. This means we’ve accumulated 300+ things to address – some big, some small.
We saw this briefly back in March, when Council was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of 300+ changes. They postponed it till this week, to give the public and themselves time to wade through it.
The biggest issue is data centers. They’re so new that they’re not yet in the development code, so we need to build those policies from scratch. But there are also a lot of more minor topic.
Note: this is only the first half of the first reading. They paused because it was getting so late. There will be at least two more meetings where they can hash out the details.
Data Centers
Let’s start here. What do we want our data center policy to be?
Five people spoke during Citizen Comment and 19 more during the public hearing. Everyone hates data centers!
Nationwide, there is a swelling backlash against data centers. Everyone hates them, everywhere!
Issue #1: Zones and Permits. Should data centers be allowed in just Heavy Industrial? Should they be allowed in other zones? Should they require a special permit?
Jane and Amanda each propose an amendment, so we have dueling amendments.
The conversation kind of overlaps on these, but they each get their own vote.
The votes:
Data centers will all be required to get a specific Conditional Use Permit from Council.
2. Amanda’s amendment: Should data centers be banned altogether in city limits?
So Data Centers will not be banned altogether.
My $0.02: This is the right outcome. I’m a techno-optimist. There is a version of data centers, somewhere over the rainbow, where they run on reclaimed water and renewable energy.
I don’t want to ban data centers – I want them to be well-regulated. So I’m glad Amanda’s amendment did not pass.
(Also Shane’s votes don’t really make sense. He wants data centers banned or unregulated, but nothing in between?)
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Issue #2: What counts as a Data Center?
Here’s what Staff proposes as a definition:
Amanda proposes: Add “Cryptocurrency mining and facilities”.
This vote passes. The definition has now been modified to include that use.
Josh: Data centers have been around forever on a small scale. Do old school data centers fall under this definition? Or just these giant new AI data centers?
Jane: What if a big business has a room full of servers, but it’s not their primary function as a business? Do they count as a data center?
Everyone agrees that this is incomplete. You want to regulate a building of computers if it’s hoovering up lots of electricity and water and spewing pollution. You don’t want to micromanage a small architecture firm who has their own servers for running CAD. We need some notions of scale and purpose.
Everyone’s going to look into this and bring back suggestions for the next meeting.
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Issue #3: Potable water for data centers:
Amanda proposes: No data center may use a potable water source for cooling purposes.
In other words, data centers must either use reclaimed water, or find an alternative cooling technology. But no wasting massive amounts of drinking water.
My $0.02: this is great!! This is what I mean when I say I am a techo-optimist! Renewable energy is cheap and available, if Texas wants it. If data centers decide to invest in non-potable water cooling, then we can solve two of the major environmental problems.
We can imagine a world where we don’t sacrifice the environment to data centers, and in turn, big tech executives accept regulations.
This passes 7-0.
This is probably my favorite amendment of the night.
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Smaller Data Center Proposals:
All of those pass.
Matthew floats the idea of requiring a supermajority to approve a data center, but says he’ll bring something back at the next meeting.
Matthew has generally been very quietly pro-data centers for the past two years, so I don’t think he’s serious here.
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Non-Data Center LDC Amendments:
Waiting Periods:
Suppose a developer wants to build some apartments, but they get turned down when they apply to re-zoning the land. How long do they have to wait until they can re-apply and try again? The answer is “it’s complicated”.
Here is the technical answer: it depends on how the motion was phrased. This is the hair that is getting split:
Situation 1 does NOT trigger a waiting period, and Situation 2 DOES trigger a waiting period of one year. It’s very subtle!
Council uses this power carefully. If Council likes a project, but the public hates it, they’re going to use Situation 1. The public feels like they got a win, and Council buys themselves some time to thread the needle. The developer jumps right back into the game.
If Council does not like the project at all, they’re going to use Situation 2, and put some nails in the coffin.
This is exactly what happened with the data center
In March 2025, P&Z denied the Mayberry Data Center. Maberry appealed the decision to Council. In August, Council voted on the appeal.
Appeals require a supermajority, so Maberry needed 6 votes. But the vote to overturn went 5-2.
The key detail: the vote was phrased as Situation 1, not Situation 2. They failed to approve the rezoning. But they did NOT deny it.
This was very intentional! Here’s what I said about it, last August:
There is no waiting period. They can waltz in tomorrow.
So there you have it.
…
Bottom line: This application is dead. But Council left a trail of bread crumbs for the applicant to re-apply to P&Z and get a better outcome.
That was Council using the loophole. Unsurprisingly, it made the public confused and angry.
And rightfully so! What do you mean, “not approve” is different from “deny”? Get outta here. Why are you playing word games with everyone?
A lot of community members thought the waiting period was being violated, and were angry that they were being jerked around.
Which brings us to tonight
Again, both Amanda and Jane have proposed amendments to fix this confusion:
Jane’s argument: Council likes the loophole! Sometimes we want to give the developer another attempt, without making them wait a year. (She did not say, “For example, with Maberry last August with the data center!” but listen: yes, they did that intentionally.)
At any rate, they only vote on Jane’s proposal:
So there you have it. Loopholes 4-evah.
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Bars Serving Food
There has always been tension in San Marcos between the Serious Grown Ups and the College Party Kids. (We all agree to ignore how the Serious Grown Ups often used to be College Party Kids.)
Decades ago, the Serious Grown Ups got mad about the number of bars on the square. So they capped the number of alcohol permits.
Then the Serious Grown Ups got mad because they wanted to have a beer at a restaurant downtown. So they added in Restaurant alcohol permits.
What are these caps? As of 2026, you can only have 14 bars and 25 restaurants downtown that serve alcohol. (There are an unlimited number of permits available for the rest of the city. It’s only capped downtown. It’s almost as if we want you to drive after a few drinks.)
What do you do if you want to open the 15th bar downtown? All the bar permits are taken. So you try to get a restaurant alcohol permit, and sell as little food as possible. This is part of why the Rooftop got shut down.
The city then plays cat-and-mouse games trying to figure out if you’re a real restaurant, or just a fake-out-secret-bar-restaurant. At one point, the city would track sales, and they wanted a certain percent of sales to come from food. Then they switched to saying “you must serve food for two meals, each of which lasts four hours”. But what if the restaurant is only open from 12-5 on Sundays? Etc.
Jane proposes an amendment: If you’re a restaurant, you must always serve meals, any time the business is open.
Amanda: What if the kitchen closes at midnight?
Jane: This will be EASIER for restaurants! I’m helping.
Alyssa: Yes, but most of these downtown restaurants close their kitchen down early.
Lorenzo: It’s a loophole. If you want a restaurant permit, then be a restaurant and sell food. If we think this is a dumb loophole, we should offer more bar alcohol permits. But until we fix the loophole, we should make them follow the rules. If you have a restaurant permit, you have to sell food.
The vote:
Interesting!
I probably would have voted “no”. Who cares if a restaurant shuts their kitchen down early and just becomes a bar after 11 pm?
….
In the end, they postpone the rest of the LDC amendments, because it’s getting late. They have not discussed:
I thought this was funny. They voted on the postponement of this item:
and very quietly, Jane mutters, “What is wrong with y’all?”
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Item 6 – reallocating the last bits of ARPA funds
All remaining Covid money has to be spent by December 2026. We’ve got a little bit freed up, to give to other projects. (Discussed here.)
The plan tonight: give $100K to Operation Triage and $100K to Mission Able, both for home repair.
However! This plan is getting derailed because of a home repair nightmare, which has been unfolding behind the scenes at Mission Able. It’s horrifying!
Here’s the scoop: the home owner lives in Dunbar, in a home that has been in her family since 1900. She keeps it immaculate and organized, but it needed foundation repair.
Mission Able supplied a contractor, who pulled in some foundation workers with no equipment. They start jockeying around with the house. The floor buckles and splits – literally, while she’s sitting in her living room. They wedge it up on cinder blocks and bricks. Some pipes burst and some walls split. They take off.
The home owner chased down their insurance, only to find out that they’re uninsured. (She even asked the contractor if they were insured, ahead of time, because the vibes were off.)
It is true that houses will shift and you will get cracks, when you re-level a foundation. But this is not that. This is honest-to-god 6″ gaps where snakes and critters can wander in. Her own granddaughter is too scared to spend the night, because of the gaps in the walls.
It’s been like this since last summer, and sounds like a nightmare. I believe there is now a second contractor working there, trying to remedy the situation?
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Council tries to figure out what went wrong. Should the city be requiring more outcomes and metrics from the grant recipients? Is the standard city oversight broken in? Is the operational structure of Mission Able broken?
Everyone sort of protests. The city oversight mechanisms were not triggered, because the first contractor didn’t pull any permits. The second contractor has pulled permits, but the actual oversight occurs when the inspection happens, and they’re not there yet.
Mission Able protests – we want to learn from this disaster and become better at what we do! We’ve done 149 projects last year, and this is the only bad one.
The plan: the city is going to meet separately with Mission Able and with the homeowner, and do a courtesy inspection to get a full sense of what needs to be done, and report back. No decision on the $100K for Mission Able tonight.
(In the meantime, we did fund the other $100K to Operation Triage.)
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Items 12-17: Some very big dollar amounts:
“CIP” stands for Capital Improvement Projects, which are the giant multi-year projects like redoing all the drainage in a neighborhood. You pay for these with grants and bonds.
If you want to see some big numbers, check these out:
yessir, those are some enormous sums of money!
I didn’t listen terribly closely to the details, but everything sounded kosher.
Workshop #1: The Homeless PIT count
“PIT” stands for “Point in Time”. The PIT Count is a fixed day in January, where cities nationwide try to actually figure how many people are homeless in their communities. Each city assembles a team of people who go out into the community and try to actually count and talk to as many homeless people as they can find on that day. (PIT count 2024, PIT count 2025)
The rules are set by the Housing and Urban Development agency, (HUD). If you complete a PIT count, it helps you apply for federal funding.
For unsheltered, think people in cars, and people outside.
For sheltered, think Hays County Women’s Shelter, Southside, Marla’s Place, but not people in hotels or motels.
The PIT count is not perfect. But it gives us useful information.
The blue column is people that they saw, but didn’t get to talk to. The blue is included in the orange group.
The gray column – Sheltered – is much smaller in 2026 than in 2025. This is because in 2025, the PIT count day ended up being a “cold weather night”, where Southside was open to everyone.
(I’m not sure why the chart has those weird gaps.)
Ages of people they were able to talk to:
and gender:
and race:
Generally homeless people have significant obstacles in their lives:
Almost all the homeless people in Hays County are in San Marcos:
They drove out to Wimberley and Dripping Springs, but did not see any people there. In Wimberly, they saw evidence of encampments, but didn’t actually see any homeless people.
Here’s where we’ve landed over the past six years:
Again, PIT counts aren’t perfect. You have to be careful when you’re looking at data like this. You can’t conclude that we’re solving homelessness – it could be that people are hiding, because they’re worried about ICE.
One presenter says that whenever ICE rumors pop up on social media, the line at the Food Bank gets cut in half. (That is so deeply depressing on so many levels.)
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We also have a second source for homeless data: the public schools.
All the school districts collect this data at the beginning of the school year:
This year’s data:
So SMCISD has an estimated 105 K-12 students who are housing insecure. This doesn’t include their parents or any baby siblings who aren’t yet in school.
One offhand comment by the presenter: Statistically, apparently babies are the age group most likely to be evicted, and children aged 2-5 are the next most likely to be evicted.
Pretty grim commentary on our society!
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At last year’s presentation, they said there was an urgent need to include homeless people in emergency action plans. For example, if we have a winter storm, how do we keep homeless people safe? How do we prevent families from freezing in their cars?
This year: progress! Relevant groups have come together and are working on this.
This year’s ask: the Homeless Management Information System. (HMIS)
It’s extremely difficult for case managers to keep track of details of homeless people. Which doctors has this person seen? What medications are they on? Do we need to locate their birth certificate or social security card? Etc.
HMIS is the system run by the Texas Homeless Network, so that everyone can pool their data and coordinate care. It costs $450 per user.
Can San Marcos help pay for this?
Answer: You bet! We’re planning on putting $9000 towards this at the May Homeless Coalition meeting.
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Workshop #2: Homeless Action Plan
In 2024, we gave Southside $50K to come up with a Homeless Action Plan, and then another $800K to carry it out. This came out of federal Covid money, so it all has to be spent by December 31st, 2026.
This is their report on how it went!
Here’s the overview:
They focused on families primarily. Like we saw a moment ago, there are at least 105 kids in SMCISD who are housing-insecure.
(But not exclusively – they did also help individuals.)
There are three main tentpoles to their plan:
The presentation walked through each of the tentpoles individually.
So first, Emergency Assistance:
Think: car repair so someone can get to their job, or covering a two-week gap in pay when they get a new job, or covering part of a high electric bill, etc. You don’t want a small emergency to snowball into a big emergency.
Next: Eviction Prevention
Both of those categories are where you see the most bang for the buck.
Being evicted is expensive, destabilizing, and sends families down a cascade of trauma. But preventing eviction can be quick, cheap, and help get someone through an isolated hard time. Win-win.
….
This last category morphed over time. This is for families who have lost their housing.
They started with Rapid Rehousing:
What they said was that San Marcos doesn’t yet have the infrastructure to carry out this kind of program. Also, HUD used to fund this kind of program under Biden, but of course now everything is a dumpster fire.
It was leading to staff burnout and having to turn away lots of families, and generally awful for everyone involved.
So for Phase II, they switched to Transitional Housing:
Basically, they’d have 20 families stay for 60 days at Southside, all together as a cohort. They’d work with these families really closely, bring in a ton of community partners, and try to transition them to permanent housing.
Here’s a bunch of partners they collaborate with:
So that’s an outline of the main programs they implemented.
….
But wait! There’s more! With the $800K, they also spruced up Southside:
which is good.
Some budget details:
This shows how expensive the Rapid Rehousing was in Phase 1, and how many more families they were able to serve with the second model.
And here’s some general financial breakdown:
and some general takeaways:
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What does Council say?
The million dollar question is: what happens when the Covid money runs out? Can we keep all this going?
They are working on it! They have enough money to keep it going through January 2027, and they are pursuing grants and stuff to keep these programs going.
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Listen, let me be a moral scold for a sec:
We know how to solve homelessness. There is no mystery. We just aren’t willing to pay for it.
Nationally, it would cost under $10 billion to end homelessness. But homeless people cost over $11 billion each year, as is! Think ER visits, untreated mental illness and addictions, and jails.
It’s more expensive to be cruel to people! Isn’t that wild?
Again, there’s no mystery here. Republicans slash funding for homelessness programs, over and over again, and here we are.
Welcome back! It’s time for a big, important EMS conversation. Also CDBG money and some neat photos.
Let’s go:
Hours 0:00 – 1:56: Let me say right up front: sorry about all the digressions. CDBG money, and a bunch of cool photos.
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: The EMS discussion. This is the weighty part of the meeting.
That’s a wrap! See you in two weeks.
Citizen Comment:
Three people spoke.
Main topics:
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Item 13: $740K in CDBG money
“CDBG” stands for Community Development Block Grant. This is money that San Marcos gets from the federal department of Housing and Urban Development.
Local nonprofits apply to San Marcos for the money. Today is a rough draft of how to allocate the money to the nonprofits. The final decision will be in July.
Because it’s federal money, there are a bunch of constraints on how it can be spent.
First is Public Services. This is capped at $111K.
These are all the nonprofits that applied, and the amounts that staff is recommending:
So there are definitely some weird ones, right?
Business and Community Lenders: apparently this is a brand new nonprofit. City staff said that it was all or nothing. If they only got a partial funding, they wouldn’t be able to get up and running. Since we couldn’t do the whole $100K, they got stuck.
HOME Center: HOME Center does great work. They do extremely intensive case management work to find stable, longterm housing for chronically homeless people. They navigate severe mental health issues, addiction, physical health, you name it. They find long-lost birth certificates needed for paperwork. Etc. It’s weird to give them only $5K. (This has been a flashpoint before.)
Here are the other two categories, Projects and Administration:
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A few other details:
Jane: Yeah, we’ve been getting $770K since the 90s.
2. There are actually two pots of money: CDBG and HSAB.
“HSAB” stands for Human Services Advisory Board. This is city money, given out in grants to nonprofits.
It’s always been a mess, having two separate pots of money that overlap in purpose. So they’re trying to align the two processes. Next year, it will be more like a single process, but we’re not there yet.
3. CDBG money requires a LOT of paperwork and tracking by the nonprofits, because it’s federal money, so there is federal reporting. HSAB money is much simpler.
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What does Council say?
Alyssa: Is there a scoring matrix? Outcomes? Deliverables? Survey results of people who are served by these nonprofits? Public opinion of the CDBG process is not good. Are there metrics on how many nonprofits can’t navigate the application process?
Answers: Yes on scoring matrix. Yes on outcomes and deliverables. But we don’t require the nonprofits to survey their participants. They do submit quarterly reports, though.
Amanda: Why is HOME center so low?
Answer: We tried to prioritize immediate need versus longterm need.
Lorenzo: We’re asking HOME to do a lot of federal paperwork, for only $5K.
Here’s the summary of the HOME application:
Amanda: Can we cover transportation and medical needs, at least? Can we bump them up to $12,200, out of that extra money that is showing up?
Answer: Yes. But not tonight.
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Jane: We’re spending $60K to light the plaques at Dunbar on the History Walk? Shouldn’t that come out of the Arts fund?
Answer: It’s considered a park amenity, to light the path. And this is coming out of the Projects category, not Public Services.
Josh: Does the applicant list stay stable over the years?
Answer: No, the number of applicants has increased. More nonprofits are willing to deal with all the massive paperwork for CDBG.
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There’s no decision tonight – this is just giving staff feedback on this first draft.
In July, Council is going to see the HSAB money and CDBG money side by side. So then they can say things like, “Ok, HOME asked for $35K from one and $30K from the other. What if we give them all $65 from HSAB instead?”
That’s the goal – to be able to divvy up both pots of money using one united big picture of all nonprofit applications.
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Item 11: Time for a digression!
This item was in the consent agenda, and was approved without discussion.
I just want to share with you some gnarly photos in the packet:
Pretty cool, right?
Weirdly compelling!
I see you, structural steel elements of Clarifier No 401 at the Wastewater Treatment Plant. You look tired.
What a composition.
In this triptych, we ask ourselves, “Who is really the rusty one? This wastewater treatment plant …or ourselves?”
Who among us is not threaded by decaying bolts?
Hey, soldered plate with tiny cobwebs: me too.
These photos are part of a larger collection that can be found at this exhibit:
Disclaimer: do not go visit that exhibit!
End of the art tour. Let’s go back to the council meeting!
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Item 5: Entry fees at Rio Vista:
They finalize this fee structure for Rio Vista park:
And they brought up entry bracelets!
They’re looking into ordering non-digital entry bracelets for locals. First one would be free, but you’d have to pick it up in person.
Thanks, Parks Department!
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Item 16: Salvage from Demo Sites
I am not sure what’s getting built here, but the Pennington Funeral Home is getting demolished:
This is on Comanche, one block up from Little HEB.
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Let’s take a quick field trip! That isn’t the original Pennington building.
That’s right!
It’s ye old Rogers Building, on the corner of Hopkins and LBJ! Right now it’s some bar called Bazaar.
It changes hands so often that you can date yourself, according to what was there when you moved to San Marcos. I personally moved here during the All Nighter Diner era.
After that, it was the Gray Horse Saloon for awhile, I think? It’s been the Wine Bar, and Vodka Street, and maybe something else.
Back in 1986, it was a sporting goods store:
….
ANYWAY. We were talking about the Pennington Funeral home, on Comanche.
They moved out, and the fire and SWAT team used the empty building for training purposes:
After all that, Mayor Jane and Matthew Mendoza decided to see if other nonprofits could repurpose parts of the building. Like: take a ceiling fan! take some filing cabinets! Use these beams in your home rehab project! Etc.
It sounds like some organizations were able to salvage some good stuff.
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Which brings us to tonight: what if all demolitions were scrapped for parts, first?
Sure, why not?
Lorenzo: As long as this doesn’t get bogged down in red tape.
Note: yes, this is a real danger. You don’t want to delay things by a week for some dusty 30-year-old ceiling fans.
Matthew: maybe we can offer a discount if the owner lets others salvage building parts!
City Lawyer: As long as this isn’t the dangerous buildings.
So city staff will bring something back.
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Item 17: Community Partnership
Back in 2018, the city formed a committee with SMCISD and Hays County. It’s been a LONG time since the committee has done anything.
Alyssa has been on the committee for years, and they’ve never met.
Today’s item is to brainstorm agenda topics for the committee, to justify firing it back up again and scheduling a first meeting.
Ideas:
Matthew: Can’t we just meet and plan topics?
(That is my question, too! This seems unnecessary.)
Jane: But what if the topics are only relevant to TWO entities?
(I don’t know why Jane is overthinking this. Surely adults can handle that however they want.)
Josh: What if we invite Texas State to join?
Answer: Back in the day, President Trauth turned us down. We hadn’t re-extended the invite under President Damphouse, but I guess we could.
Lorenzo: that would just be the Core Four all over again.
Answer: Sort of yes, sort of no.
Jane: Hays, SMCISD, and the city are all elected officials. Whereas if Texas State joins, it would be an appointed official.
Bottom line: They’ll reach out to Texas State, and maybe someday there will be a meeting.
Citizen Comment: Five people talk.
They all talk about EMS, so I’ll put their comments down below.
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The backstory:
There are nine different Emergency Service Districts, called ESD #1 – #9, which make up Hays County. Some are fire, some are just EMS, and some are both.
The districts with EMS are 1, 2, 3, 7 and 9:
Hays County ESD #1: Dripping Springs, Driftwood, Henly.
Hays County ESD #2: Buda
Hays County ESD #3: San Marcos
Hays County ESD #7: Wimberley.
Hays County ESD #9: Kyle and all the country bits around those towns.
This map of the districts is hard to read, but it’s the only one I could find:
In 2020, Wimberley and Buda were running their own EMS.
The other three ESDs all shared an EMS service. We all contracted out with San Marcos-Hays County EMS, (SMHC-EMS), a nonprofit EMS.
Great!
In 2022, SMHC-EMS decides to start forming a union:
It took them about 2 years, but they finally negotiated a new contracted with their board of directors which included things like this:
Great!
About 30 seconds later, ESD #1 and ESD #9 both cancel their contracts with SMHC-EMS, and vote to open their own EMS departments. Pretty much textbook union-busting.
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So San Marcos is stuck holding the bag, by ourselves. What do we want to do? Last August, we commissioned a study with some consultants.
January 2026: The consultants give us three choices:
There’s a long conversation about collective bargaining and labor rights, and whether a City-based EMS could be granted some form of negotiating power.
A majority of council votes for Option 3, but they ask city staff to look into the laws around collective bargaining and EMS.
…
Let’s talk about union-busting for a sec.
Forming a union is a big hassle, and so my guess is that the grievances with management were significant. (I don’t have any details, though.)
Pre-union-busting, how much did EMS cost everyone? Here’s what I found from 2022:
ESD #1: $3.3 million in taxes (here)
ESD #9: $3.84 million in taxes (here)
San Marcos: $4.22 million in taxes (here)
Total: $11.36 million of taxpayer money to SMHC-EMS.
Post-union-busting, we now have three separate departments. Here’s what tax-payers are paying in 2026:
ESD #1: $8 million in taxes (here)
ESD #9: $10.2 million in taxes (here)
San Marcos: I can’t locate this for the life of me. Let’s ballpark $9 million in taxes, for our City EMS, based on the consultant study from January.
Total: $27.2 million of taxpayer money, to three separate EMS departments.
Bottom line: Way to go, asshats. You’re spending $16 million extra of taxpayer dollars, but at least you’re screwing over the people who keep us alive in an emergency.
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Which brings us to tonight!
The point of the workshop is to update Council on how it’s going, planning for a new City EMS department.
The staff presentation
First off: city staff say there is absolutely no way to give EMS collective bargaining power under state law.
Police and Fire Departments can unionize, which is known as “Civil Service”.
But EMS doesn’t qualify as Civil Service, because San Marcos is too small:
You have to have 460K people or more. So Austin can do this, but not us.
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The first step is to hire an EMS Chief:
After this, we’d start hiring everyone else. Current SMHC-EMS workers would have first dibs on applying, and then we’d open it up to anyone else.
There’s a whole lot of medical mumbo-jumbo about credentialing, medical directors, clinical operating guidelines, physician consultations, etc, which I honestly do not have the background to follow.
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What do people say at Citizen Comment?
Five people speak:
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What does Council say?
Alyssa: How did you build the job description for the EMS Chief? What’s the timeline?
Answer: We looked at other city EMS chiefs, and based it on those. We want someone who can build an EMS department from scratch, and also build lots of partnerships. Maybe down the road, we can do mobile community healthcare or something. The hiring process will probably take two months, but it’s flexible.
Amanda: Austin uses a process called “Consultation” instead of collective bargaining. Can we do that?
Answer: Austin has a special bracketed carve out in state law. We may be able to do something called “Voluntary Consultation”.
Note: What is Voluntary Consultation?
It sounds like a soft version of collective bargaining. Here’s an explanation about how it’s used in school districts:
While the law explicitly prohibits collective bargaining, many school districts have adopted consultation policies allowing school boards to meet and confer with educators about educational policy and employment conditions. These consulting agreements are related to the concept of collective bargaining but constructed in such a way that the input given is considered advisory rather than legally binding, and therefore does not qualify as a collective bargaining agreement by law. The school districts are not required to act on the input received from the employees and final decisions on matters discussed through the consultation process are decided by school board members.
So it’s not binding, and it would be voluntary by the city. At best, it’s a good-faith effort to foster communication. At worst, it’s thoughts-and-prayers.
City Manager Reyes: this means that certain city employees would get a perk not offered to the rest of city employees. Something to consider.
(Note: We could offer Voluntary Consultation to everyone. Just saying.)
…
Amanda: Is it viable to keep the current contract in place to 2028?
No one really answers this, but this is the central question. Should we build an EMS department from scratch in 5 months? Or should we see whether it works to just keep our contract with SMHC-EMS?
There’s this chart:
Sorry about the screenshot. I know it’s tiny and hard to read. (It wasn’t in the packet, because it was only requested the day before.)
I think this chart is supposed to show that it saves more money to build our own EMS department by October. But it really doesn’t.
Lorenzo makes an excellent point: this chart supposedly compares City EMS and SMHC-EMS. Some of the numbers should be identical either way – for example, the amount of revenue from ambulance rides should be the same. But they’re not – they’re off by $1.3 million. (This is the first row of the chart, comparing the 1st entry and the 4th entry.)
In several places, numbers that should match don’t actually match. This is probably because nobody actually knows the real estimates, and they used different sources to get projections in the different columns.
Point being: no one can really say which will be cheaper, the current contract or a City EMS.
Amanda: This is not solely about revenue. I’m focused on the quality of care and taking care of our community, not taking the cheapest option.
But Lorenzo wasn’t arguing that we should go for the cheapest option. He was arguing that we haven’t really thought through just staying with the current contract. It is a viable option, but we’re acting like it’s off the table.
My read is that staff came in with a lot of momentum towards building a new EMS department. There just isn’t a lot of oxygen in the room to discuss continuing the current contract.
…
Josh: I value people and communication more than I value the nitty-gritty details!
Josh is both right and wrong. He’s correct that when people with power operate in good faith, and value their employees and value communication, you have the best possible scenario. But he’s also wrong: when people with power stop operating in good faith, the only leverage that employees have are the details that are spelled out. When things go sideways, the devil is in the details.
I think Josh believes “Look, I have good intentions and I like being a good boss. That’s enough to make sure we’re in the good scenario!”
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So what’s the timeline?
If everything was put in motion today, it would take 6 months for the state license to come through. Then we’d coordinate with Medicare, Medicaid, DEA, etc etc.
Matthew: Where would we put city EMS?
Answer: We’d talk to their landlord and try to rent out their current building.
Hopefully everything would be ready to go on October 1st, but otherwise we’d have a contingency plan, which we also would build out.
Jane: How long did ESD 1 and ESD 9 take to create their own plan?
Answer: ESD 1 took 6-8 months, ESD 9 was a bit longer.
Jane: can we compare benefits plans?
Answer: We’re working on it.
Note: It’s not just benefits. At the January meeting, they also mentioned looking to make sure seniority transfers over. Otherwise you are going to lose your most experienced EMS workers.
Alyssa: This is big and complicated, and there are so many ways for it to go disastrously wrong if we rush it.
Fire Chief Les Stevens: The Medical Practitioner oversees these transitions and would not allow care to lapse for one second.
Amanda: In the next legislative session, maybe we can lobby for fixing the Civil Service rules?
….
Ok Council:
1. Who wants to stick with City based EMS?
Yes: Matthew, Shane, Jane, Josh, Amanda
No: Lorenzo and Alyssa
Alyssa says that she is just not yet satisfied with the open questions about labor protections.
2. Who wants to look into Voluntary Consultation as a lite-collective-bargaining?
Yes: everyone.
No: no one.
So there you have it.
…
At the very end, the union rep Zach Phillips weighs in again:
Alyssa: Will we put a union rep on the hiring committee for the EMS chief?
Answer: Absolutely. Yes.
…
Final notes: How are we going to pay for this? We’re already looking at a $4 million budget hole. As Zach said, this will not generate revenue.
My guess is that that will be a big, messy conversation, and so there just wasn’t time to roll that conversation into the this workshop.
What a mess! Sure do wish we hadn’t done this last year:
But here we are.
Aaaand we’re back! Spring break is over and we’ve got a $4 million budget hole looming for 2027. Also we’re going to start charging out-of-towners to swim at Rio Vista this summer. Enjoy?
Let’s dive in!
Hours 0:00 – 3:05: the North campus area plan, some 2027 Budget planning, paid parking at the Lion’s Club and admission fees at Rio Vista, plus some little items
They shuffled the Council calendar in March to avoid Spring Break. This means we’ve got another Council meeting this Tuesday, instead of taking a week off. See you all next week.
The San Marxist 