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.
Just one council meeting this month, but it’s a good one! Lots of subdivisions going in around Redwood, a new San Marcos logo, and concept plans for the river parks and Quail Creek park.
Here we go:
Hours 0:00 – 3:44: Lots of discussion on developments going in near Redwood, and grants for social services. Also some smaller items – SMPD, Berry Aviation, the Hays CAD building, etc.
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: we unveil the San Marcos logo, discuss some water/wastewater fees, and look at concept plans for the river parks and the new Quail Creek park on the east side of town.
I’ll be back later this month for the yearly wrap-up post (yawn), and then we’ll dive into election season! Exciting times.
1. Human Service Advisory Board funding: speakers from three nonprofits – Hays Helping Hands, Southside, and BR3T. (I’ll save their comments for Items 31-32.)
2. Accessibility and San Marcos: one speaker, he’s available to support the city as they start to implement accessibility measures.
3. Subdivision coming on 123 and FM 1978: three speakers. Two neighbors who are concerned about changes coming, and one representative from Redwood who is interested in the wastewater treatment plant. (I’ll save their comments for Item 22.)
4. Thank you for the ban on data centers. Don’t let developers build student housing and flip it to university. Hold the university accountable for supporting the city. (1 speaker)
5. We need to bring more businesses to San Marcos, to grow the budget. We need Texas State to help staff police downtown. They should be responsible for their students. (1 speaker)
On to the meeting!
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Consent Agenda
The consent agenda is about 10-20 items that get voted on as a group, without discussion.
One item of note – SMPD officers in schools:
This is not new, of course. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
There was no discussion, but Alyssa and Amanda both voted “no” on this item.
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Item 21: HOT and STR fees
“HOT” stands for Hotel Occupancy Tax, and “STR” stands for Short Term Rentals. We charge a tax on hotels, and use the money to promote tourism.
Sometimes the hotels and short term rentals pay the city using a credit card. Credit cards come with a 3% surcharge. So the city has been paying 3% to the credit card companies every time the hotels pay by credit card.
This adds up to about $40K/year.
Today: Should we make the hotels and short term rentals pay the credit card fees?
The vote: Yes, we should. It’s unanimous – pass the cost on.
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Item 22: Sedona South
There is a huge tract of land southeast of San Marcos which has gotten kicked around for years:
Someday, this is mostly going to be a massive amount of single family housing sprawl. (Why not include 4-plexes and townhomes and stores throughout these developments?)
Now we’re adding in this one:
And if I’m reading things correctly, this one is also coming soon:
But for right now, we’re talking about Sedona South.
We’re going to talk about the reasons I don’t like it, and the reasons I do like it.
Here’s the main reason I don’t like it:
All that pink is going to be single family housing. The brown on the left is going to be half apartments, and half commercial.
Why not put corner stores and commercial in that pink? Developers don’t like to set aside land for corner stores, because stores don’t get built until the people have all moved in.
This is not walkable at all. This is not a 15-minute neighborhood. This would not fly under the Comprehensive Plan. But it doesn’t have to, because they’re not asking to be annexed into the city.
This new wastewater treatment plant is very important, because of this:
That wastewater treatment plant is crucial for the people living in Redwood.
Some backstory
Back in 2019, a researcher from UT Austin came to Redwood, and started testing people, and found that a lot of people there had the parasite strongyloides. This was living in the soil because the septic systems were failing, mostly because the soil there is incompatible with septic systems and causes them to break and leak. So even if there was money for everyone to fix their septic systems, they would break and leak all over again.
The only solution is to get on a wastewater system.
So Redwood and Rancho Vista organized. They connected with a group called Water Finance Exchange. They formed a nonprofit, the Redwood-Rancho Vista Water Supply Corporation, and they applied for the Closing America’s Wastewater Access Gap grant. They were selected to receive assistance, and they’re now working with some engineers to find a solution.
The solution: connect to a wastewater treatment plant.
OMG look!
IT’S RIGHT THERE. How could we not?
Confidential to Council: You hold the power! From your lips to God’s ears!
….
What else?
Two neighbors spoke – they’re not exactly thrilled that this massive development is going in across the street, but they said the city staff has been super helpful in talking with them. (The third speaker talked about the water treatment tie-in stuff with Redwood, from above.)
Council mildly made comments fiddling with the details:
Can we ban car washes, to conserve water?
Can we ban waste services?
Answer: Maybe! Sure!
The vote: unanimous. Everyone is in favor.
Note: I couldn’t find anything on how much money the city gets from this agreement. Seems like an important detail, though.
….
Items 23-24: Riverstone Apartments
Riverstone Apartments are located here:
It opened in 2024.
Riverstone Apartments is a LIHTC complex, which stands for “Low Income Housing Tax Credit”.
Their LIHTC project works like this:
They get a tax break from the state.
They still pay full taxes to San Marcos.
They had to make all 336 units “affordable”.
“Affordable” means it’s priced for families earning $67K – $80K, or individuals earning $47K – $56K. These rates are based on what people earn in Austin, because San Marcos is in the Austin metro area.
That might be poor for Austin, but that’s pretty mid for San Marcos. It excludes a lot of poor San Marcos residents who need affordable housing.
Here’s the problem: the LIHTC deal was made in 2019. Then Covid and inflation happened.
They thought they’d be paying about $100K in property taxes, but their project ended up getting appraised three times higher than they estimated. So their property taxes are actually closer to $300K. Now they can’t afford their local taxes.
Today’s question: Are we willing to cut a deal with them and waive their local taxes?
They’re offering to set aside 51 of the 336 units for extremely poor families with income under $40K, or individuals earning less than $28K. In exchange, they wouldn’t pay county taxes or SMCISD taxes, and only $100K/year to the city.
The argument against it:
The city really can’t afford this – this would eat almost 1/3 of the entire Social Services grant budget.
This would cost SMCISD about $400K in taxes. And they don’t have a say in this deal.
The county would also lose money. (I don’t know how much)
The argument in favor:
We really do need more affordable housing, and this is at least a little bit.
There are also residents living there currently. If this complex gets sold, their rent will go up.
What does Council say?
Everyone is pretty grim. It’s just too much money, compared to how other nonprofits could stretch that money.
The vote
Yes, give them the tax break: nobody
No, sorry: all seven council members
So the apartment complex will probably get foreclosed and they will have to sell it off.
……
Items 25-27: Back down by Redwood again:
This time we’re focused on region 4, River Bridge Ranch:
River Bridge Ranch is a different kind of development than Sedona South. First, it’s inside the city limits. Second, it’s a PID, which stands for “Public Improvement District”.
What’s a PID?
If you buy a home in River Bridge Ranch, you’re going to pay an extra $1300-$2800 on your tax bill. This extra money will just go to pay for streets and infrastructure in River Bridge Branch.
The developer gets to artificially lower the price of the homes, and hides the extra cost in yearly taxes. Residents feel extra burdened by taxes. They blame the city, and pressure the city to lower taxes. If the city lowers property taxes, it hurts vulnerable people. So we’re helping the developer out, at the expense of people who depend on city services.
Is it the worst crime in the world? No, of course not. But it still makes me cranky.
Back to River Bridge Ranch
It will be all single family sprawl:
SIGH. Can’t we put some 4-plexes and townhomes throughout this? Can’t we ever have some stores?
So what brings us here today?
Before, the PID was for $10 million.
The developer gets to knock about $7K off the price of each house,
Instead, each resident would pay a yearly PID fee of ~ $250 every year, rolled into the tax bill.
Now the developer now wants to make the PID worth $60 million:
Now the developer gets to knock $40K off the sale price of every house.
Each resident will pay a yearly PID fee of ~$1480 every year, rolled into the tax bill.
The reason is because construction costs have gone up so much since 2020. Sure, that’s understandable. But I still resent the PID.
The vote: unanimous and in favor. Oh well.
….
Item 9: Berry Aviation
We lease part of the airport to a company called Berry Aviation.
If you’ll recall, Governor Abbott and Governor DeSantis got into a little pissing match back in 2022 and 2023. They were both trying to be the most ostentatiously cruel to immigrants, for shits and giggles.
Abbott promised jobs to immigrants, and then bussed them off to various northern cities where there were no jobs, no connections, nothing waiting for them. Just for the sheer sport of making their lives harder. He has done this to roughly 100,000 immigrants.
In the past, we allocated these two pots out separately, which was tricky for the nonprofits. Should they apply to both? Is one a better fit than the other? If they apply to the lesser, does it make it harder for them to get awarded the better fit one? etc.
This year, we’re discussing both pots together at the same time.
Here is what staff is recommending for the CDBG money:
Here is what staff is recommending for the HSAB money:
(If you want to read why things did not get funded, I could only find it in the gigantic meeting packet. Go here and read pages 1380-1382.)
Between the two pots of money, the total amount requested is $3.3 million. We only have $1.5 million to give out. So that’s a bummer.
This is a rich state! There is plenty of money to solve a lot of humanitarian problems.
Bad news!
Our elected officials are ruthless asshats who will not spend money to solve humanitarian problems.
The problem with San Marcos is Texas, as always.
…
Citizen Comment
At the beginning of the meeting, people from several nonprofits spoke to Council:
Hays Helping Hands (formerly Nosotros Los Gente): why $0 for the one program? Can you combine our applications and let us shift money around?
Southside: We knew we would not receive our full amounts, but the ask was real. The need is beyond our current capacity.
In the past 6 months, we could only provide 20% of eviction prevention aid
We provided 16K meals in 2025, but we’re projected to provide 20K meals in 2026, on same budget
The waitlist for shelter 250 people long.
All our partners are also underfunded. Feeding programs have gotten full funding but other parts of funding children and elderly have not. City leadership needs to put together an action plan to find more funding for nonprofits. Less than $1 million could fund every request.
BR3T: BR3T started off using a lot of covid money to provide emergency shelter.
Currently in Hays county, 59% of renters are rent-burdened, which means spending >30% of their income on housing.
Eviction rates have doubled since pre-covid.
Our partners are equally underfunded. The need has outgrown HSAB funding. HSAB needs more funding.
…..
What does Council say?
Lorenzo: HOME Center applied to both pots of money for the same project. Can we consolidate them to one application?
This does not go anywhere, since he didn’t consult HOME center ahead of time.
Amanda: I’d like to move $5K from Hays Mental Health Court to HOME Center.
The vote on Amanda’s motion:
Yes, give HOME Center the extra $5K: Shane, Amanda, Alyssa, Josh
No, don’t: Lorenzo
Jane abstains because she is on the Mental Health Court board. Matthew is absent.
Then the overall vote on CDBG funding:
The vote on all staff CDBG recommendations:
Yes: Jane Shane, Amanda, Alyssa, Josh
No: Lorenzo
I have no idea why Lorenzo is being ornery.
Note: HSAB funding will be rolled into the budget in September, so we don’t vote on that now.
….
Since Texas is not going to step up…
Could San Marcos afford to spend more money on social services?
Sort of! We do not have much extra money laying around. But we could have made different decisions in the past.
Faig? Facks? Hamily? What in the AI slop is this garbage.
The City Budget Is a Jar
Our city budget works like this, too:
Big rocks: things that tie up millions of dollars for 30 years
Bonds for construction projects. (Like the $44 million for the wastewater treatment plant that we approved a few minutes ago.)
Development agreements for things like Embassy Suites/Conference Center, or Amazon, or Buccee’s
Developments like Kissing Tree, which gets $1.8 million per year. (They have a deal known as a TIRZ, Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone.)
These guys are all set for 30 years! No yearly proposals. No justifying their pennies. No unexpected cuts when budgets are lean. Once they get approved, they’re golden.
Medium rocks: Departmental funding
Salaries and benefits for city employees
Basic maintenance and supplies
These departments do have to grovel every year, but there’s an expectation that budgets won’t be drastically slashed without warning. It gets incrementally squeezed, little by little.
Sand in the crevices:
All the social services.
Anyone’s pet project
Imagine if social services was a big rock! Imagine if they were guaranteed $1.8 million a year, for the next 30 years, like Kissing Tree. Imagine if we took out a bond to fund social services.
Note: I am not recommending this. Funding should come from Texas and the US federal government. We are not a rich town!
My point is how choices have been automatically baked into the budget, for decades. No one has to consciously choose an unfair thing for it to perpetuate itself. (This is called an accountability sink.)
….
Item 33: Hays Central Appraisal District
If you’re a home owner, your home gets appraised every year, and then you get taxed on that value.
The magic happens up in Kyle:
Apparently they’ve outgrown their building.
The main problem is that they need to be able to handle protests. To quote the packet:
Since 2019, the number of protests filed has increased from 22,000 to more than 55,000. To address this growth, the Board of Directors expanded the number of members of the ARB, but the District office does not have the capacity to house more than three panels per day. Even with these efforts, the increasing volume of protests continues to place significant demands on District facilities and resources.
The current District office does not adequately support our public visitors, staffing levels, operational needs, or future growth. Parking shortages create ongoing logistical and safety concerns for staff and visitors alike. We must be better positioned to serve the public, support the ARB process, and produce timely appraisal rolls for all taxing units.
Here’s what it looks like:
In order for the new building to get going, the county has to get permission from all the cities. Council was fine with this.
This means that our payments will go up in the future. But not today.
….
Item 37: Homelessness Committee and Criminal Justice Reform Committee
These two committees are getting merged to one Safety Committee.
Seems fine. There are a lot of solutions that affect both of these.
What are we going to do with the river parks and Quail Creek Park?
Let’s go.
….
Workshop 1: Time for branding!
In this economy, with the price of a tank of gas pushing $4, you know what I could really go for?
A NEW CITY LOGO!
Now, San Marcos has already had a logo for the past decade or so:
I think it’s called “The Waterfall Logo”. But it’s stale, yes?
So we hired some consultants. They’ve been working on this for about a year. It cost $80K. (But it did not come out of taxpayer money. It came from the hotel taxes on visitors.)
First the consultants got to know us:
I guess. Then they summarized us:
Ok, that’s pretty on-the-nose.
Apparently everyone said the same thing: we’re surrounded by cookie-cutter suburbs and San Marcos is kinda allergic to that vibe. We’re like authentic, man.
So […drumroll…] here’s what the new logo looks like:
I don’t hate it? It’s kind of a cross between Willy Wonka and Splash Mountain:
Sure, why not.
….
Honestly: this is a completely normal, standard thing that cities do. The goal is to drum up tourism and visitors.
So what can we put our logo on?
Brochures, definitely.
What else?
How about those new signs on I-35?
Day AND night, yessir.
What about a flashy cut out fountain sign?
We got you!
MORE SIGNS! Signs everywhere!
Your garbage can will get branded!
It’ll be on your new safety vest!
Your whole wardrobe is going to be on theme!
Now we’re cooking with gas! Let’s go!
What else can AI hallucinate?
Giant murals!
And your fine new necklace:
Or some pins, perhaps?
This will be perfect for when you go off-roading with your bros:
And this will be perfect for off-roading with your grandma:
Savor the round, gold hardness of commemorative San Marcos coins:
So circular.
And finally, drink some romantic San Marcos river water with your sweetie, in your very own San Marcos champagne flutes:
You’re going to be so popular, just you wait.
…
What does council say?
Question: How quickly will all this schwag show up? Answer: Don’t hold your breath!
The free parts – meaning the digital images – will start immediately. None of that other stuff is getting ordered today, though.
For everything else, they’ll keep using the old stuff. Over the next five years, when a sign needs to be replaced, or a commemorative coin loses its sparkle, they’ll replace it with the new version.
Impact fees are fees paid by developers when they build something new. These fees would go to help fund water and wastewater projects.
We haven’t updated these fees in a while, so they’ve fallen behind:
Orange is where our fees were set in 2018. Red is the new, proposed fees in 2026.
Council all basically fine with it. Maybe some rebates for green infrastructure?
This will come back in September.
…..
Workshop 3: The River Parks and Quail Creek Park
First, the River Parks:
The river parks are a little confusing, because there are15 different names for this long stretch of land.
Let me help!
Dog Park is by Walgreen’s
Skate Park is by the library
Memorial Park is by the Activity Center
City Park is the Lion’s Club
Plaza Park is the stage for Movies in the Park, Music at the Park, Sights & Sounds, etc
Children’s Park is the big playground
Rio Vista is where the falls are.
Ramon Lucio is the baseball fields
Today we’re talking about just this part:
Within that, they’re really focused on the down river parks: Children’s Park, Rio Vista, and Ramon Lucio.
Here’s some issues:
Parking. There’s not enough parking by the Children’s Park and Rio Vista. But you also don’t want people to park too close to the river, because that’s bad for your river.
2. The outdoor pool at Rio Vista
No one really uses it, mostly because of all the traffic to the river. We need a big city pool that residents can get to more easily.
This is where Quail Creek park comes in. Can we put the pool out there?
3. The baseball fields
Should these be relocated somewhere else, where they wouldn’t compete with the river traffic?
Can we put these out at Quail Creek?
…
City staff floated like eight different versions of what it could look like, but here is staff’s main proposal:
I know, super tiny.
Council mostly focused on the children’s park, the pool, and the baseball fields:
Here are the main changes:
Parking lot by Children’s Park is moved closer to the street, has way more spots, and has a roundabout.
Street parking is angled and head-in, instead of parallel parking like it is now. This makes a lot more street parking.
No more pool, but yes to splash pad.
Tennis courts stay.
Only one baseball field.
What does Council say?
Right now there are four baseball fields and one softball field. Everyone HATES the idea of getting rid of these.
(Apparently some people felt the baseball fields were unaesthetic? Like if you’re driving by on I-35, you might see them and shudder? And then go kick a puppy?)
Anyway, the baseball fields are staying.
…
Amanda: It’s a problem that we don’t have any drop-in soccer fields. The ones at Five Mile are off-limits, unless you are part of a league. Lots of people just want to play pick up games.
Josh: In El Paso, there were little soccer fields all over the place.
Staff: We can consider that!
Amanda: – Soccer fields could be small. Just some area for people to play. – How about some tables with built in chess/checkerboards? – We need some community theater space. – Is there going to be plenty of shade?
Answer: We’re planting lots of trees, and there will be little shade structures. Chess boards can work. The theater part will take some thinking.
The San Marxist 