Hello everyone! Ahead of time, it sounded like Council might have a big fight night, but it ended up being pretty mellow. We didn’t kill citizen comment nor give data centers a fast track. Read all about how it all fizzled out!
Jump in:
Hours 0:00 – 4:32: The biggies: the land development code and the citizen comment thing. Also city-run childcare and CDBG grants.
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: Covid money has to be spent by December. We’re going to spend every last cent that we can.
Note: the next meeting isn’t until March 31st. They rearranged the calendar to avoid Spring Break. Try not to miss me too much!
It’s very hard to speak concisely when you’re new to citizen comment
Emailing council is no substitute for citizen comment, because other people don’t get to read the emails, and council can ignore emails. This is how the public informs each other.
The nationwide average is 3 minutes per speaker.
Main points on Topic 2:
Are we making it easier for Data Centers by allowing them in the Business Park zoning?
Are we making it easier for Data Centers by giving the permitting decision to P&Z?
Why aren’t we proposing regulations on their water use, air quality and waste water quality, power usage, and other things like that?
We will get to this! Sit tight.
Finally, that last 41st speaker, on his own topic: Clearly last meeting, everyone said they love the river. Can we monetize the river? There aren’t any billion-dollar industries besides data centers. How are we going to bring businesses to this town?
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One last comment that’s worth noting:
At the 3 pm meeting, Max Baker asked: Hey, the executive session was all about “Confidential Utility Competitive Matters” with the Lower Colorado River Authority. Is this a data center thing?
City Lawyer: Legally we cannot say, but no, this was not a data center thing.
Good to know!
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Item 7: Youth Standards of Care
This is a yearly item. San Marcos runs a bunch of affordable camps for kids. The big one is Summer Fun, which is $40 for the entire week, including meals. This is really a lifesaver for lots of families. There’s also a discovery camp, and a spring break camp, and other helpful camps.
City run camps are exempt from state licensing the way other childcare centers are licensed. Instead, they have to pass a Standards of Care. So this is that.
SiEnergy is a natural gas company. They are not in San Marcos. They’re in Houston, Dallas-FortWorth, and Austin.
If they want to come to San Marcos, they have to get a franchise agreement with the city. Then they’d have to pay the city a surcharge once they’re operating.
The franchise agreements last five years. They’ve had one for the past five years, which they got one back in 2021. They’ve just been sitting on it. Now it’s 2026, and they want another one, for another five years.
Everyone says fine.
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Item 9: CDBG Money
CDBG stands for “Community Development Block Grants”. This is money from the federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) department. San Marcos gets about $740K every year.
Applications from nonprofits were due last week. City staff are about to wade through them. So tonight is to find out if there’s anything specific that Council wants staff to think about while reading applications.
Max Baker speaks up during the public hearing: Hey, the Civics Club has been working on the Tenants Bill of Rights. Can we steer some funding towards those efforts?
The Tenants Bill of Rights dovetails nicely because it can keep housing decent. They say they’ll look into this.
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Item 10: The LDC
This is the first hot potato of the night!
Background
“LDC” stands for Land Development Code. The Land Development Code is where all the planning and zoning rules are spelled out in excruciating detail.
Because it’s so weedy, it requires lots of revisions. If a law gets changed, you have to change the LDC. If you change one thing, you have to change 20 other details that are all connected. People find typos or extraneous details that didn’t need to be there. New situations arise and we need new rules to deal with them. Council has new ideas about how to do things better. Etc.
The planning department takes notes, and stockpiles all of these changes for two years. Then they take the pile out and implement all the changes, all at once. This is that.
There are 320 proposed changes. They range from boring and insignificant to exciting and controversial.
What does the public say?
Everyone’s worried that this is a stealth maneuver for data centers. (Thirteen speakers.)
What does staff say?
Data Centers: Let’s start here. The staff proposal is terrible and I promise that it is not going to happen. Multiple council members said they had amendments to fix this. They know everyone hates it.
So what was it? The proposal was to require a permit for the Business Park zone and the Light Industrial zone, and automatically allow data centers in Heavy industrial.
My $0.02: Is there any way to put standards on water and electric use, as part of the permit process?
…
Here are a bunch more of the LDC changes, mentioned in the staff presentation:
Revising the Valid Petition rules for protesting a rezoning, to match the new state law.
My personal favorite: the state struck down Occupancy Restrictions.
Occupancy Restrictions are the city rules that say things like “No more than two unrelated people may live in the same house”. It’s micromanaging what people do in their own homes, and it’s very classist. It’s never enforced unless you’re hunting around for a reason to harass someone.
We’ve had big fights about it here and here and here. We loosened it from two unrelated people to three unrelated people. And now it’s gone! Haha. Good riddance.
Mellow out on when a historical property needs a Certificate of Appropriateness
Modifies when a Qualified Watershed Protection Plan is required:
Tinkering with lot widths and irregular shaped lots
Weird caps on parkland dedication:
I’m not clear on how generous this is.
Zero lot line houses and cottage courts in CD-3 (this is good!)
Including microbreweries into the possible land uses
Add “sensitive features protection zones” around Environmental Protection Zones
Allow street parking to count towards parking requirements downtown. This is good for walkability and density.
Require bike parking racks to be provided with parking lots. (This is good!)
Add pollinator plants to what can be planted downtown. (yay for butterflies!)
Instead of the city putting up signs about public hearings, the applicant is responsible for putting up signs. The city has to supervise, so I don’t know if this helps much, though.
We used to have something called PDDs, where the city could micromanage what a developer built, and developers could get all kinds of breaks. Then we got rid of them. Now we’re bringing a lite version back: you can put constraints on developers, but no freebies. Note: Maybe this is a good place to put water and power use considerations?
Formalizing what we mean by amplified sound and background sound, so that P&Z can put restrictions on downtown bars.
Add in Demolition Delays to one of the tables
Eliminate number of rooms from hotel categories.
Tree surveys required any time someone wants to develop around a heritage or protected tree
Require downtown businesses to clean 100 feet out from their exits instead of just 50 feet.
It’s a lot.
I didn’t go through the other 250 changes to verify that they were all minor. There’s always a judgement call on whether something is a big deal or not.
What does Council say?
It takes about 2 seconds for Amanda to motion to postpone. This is such a gigantic topic that no one has properly vetted all 300+ changes.
Note: The data center thing will definitely be changed. Several council members said this. But feel free to weigh in with your preference!
The SMART/Axis terminal never really had an epic meeting, because it was withdrawn before the rezoning came for a vote. But there was six months of people showing up to comment.
So this is not a new thing. (But I went and looked up some old controverseys – Cape’s Dam, and the Sessom Creek apartments, and the Woods Apartments, and the HEB on Wonderworld – all of these citizen comment periods were at most an hour. So things are getting longer.)
Which brings us to today
So the last meeting was a doozy. This meeting, Jane proposes that we should cut people off after 1 minute.
DUDE JANE. What the hell? This idea monumentally dumb in so many ways:
Don’t restrict people’s participation. Citizen Comment is heavily utilized because it holds so much value.
The timing is tone-deaf – are you trying to come off like you’re retaliating?
If you don’t like going until 3 am, then focus on that. Your policy should address your problem. Right now, it sounds like you think the problem is people having three minutes to talk.
Jane speaks first! Here’s her argument:
She’s not trying to remove Citizen Comment altogether!
She’s willing to go to 2 minutes, to avoid the Austin lawsuit.
You can say if you’re a Yes or a No on an item in 1 minute.
If you have more to say, send an email. (Preferably before 5 pm the Friday before the meeting.)
Right now, the 100th speaker speaks at 11 pm. This way, the 100th speaker would speak at 8 pm. This is good for the public citizens who want to speak!
Alyssa claps back hard: Absolutely not. Give our neighbors every opportunity to speak. Organizing is hard and stressful and we’re not going to create more obstacles.
But Alyssa does also admit: it’s true that none of us are at our best at 1:00 am.
Amanda goes next: Hard no on reducing citizen comment time. But there is a problem with these ultra long meetings. Why don’t we brainstorm creative solutions for that?
Lorenzo: – I’m open to brainstorming other creative solutions. – I’m open to reducing citizen comment. – And also, have you all heard yourselves ramble? Maybe some limits on council monologues?
Oh Lorenzo. You drag things out during council meetings!
But Lorenzo also brings good ideas to council discussions! He notices details and is good at brainstorming creative solutions. But he’s not quick about it. He sometimes gets hung up on tiny details and goes down rabbit holes trying to hash them out.
Josh: When people aren’t sure what they’re walking into, it sparks fears and leads to citizen comments that drag on. If we’re more prepared, it leads to more clarity and better-run meetings.
…
Bottom line: they’re going to have a future council discussion on how to shorten meetings.
My $0.02: you’re going to have to meet more often. Clearly San Marcos has outgrown two meetings per month.
Either:
Cut meetings off at 11 pm and come back on Wednesday?
Meet weekly occatsionally?
Special sessions for hot topics?
I personally do not like the last option, because my schedule for cranking out these posts hangs by a thread sometimes. But I guess the world doesn’t revolve around me. Sadly.
By the end of 2024, it all had to be contracted out. We did that.
Here’s what the Covid Relief money went to:
(Note: For the Covid Relief money, they only mention $2.67 million of the $6 million in today’s presentation. I assume the rest got spent years ago.)
Here’s what we’ve spent the $18 million ARPA money on:
It has to all be spent by the end of 2026. So everything is wrapping up.
Which brings us to today
As projects finish up, there’s often a little bit of money left over. We’re allowed to put that towards one of the existing contracts, but you can’t start anything new.
We’ve got about $320K freed up from these projects:
In other words: suppose you’re 70 and you bought your house in 1980, and you’ve worked low-wage jobs your whole life, and now you’re in danger of being homeless because your house needs $50K in repair so that it’s not condemned. This is the kind of program that comes in, fixes your foundation and your air conditioning, so that you can safely and happily stay in your home.
The grant consultant is the person who understands all the federal rules, so that we don’t risk losing this money due to mismanagement. We were going to have to pay this $120K either way.
What does Council say?
Jane: How about $5K to buy pet food for the PALS pet food drive program? That’s allowed because we had a covid contract with them already.
Alyssa: I need way more information. What are the deliverables? What’s the selection process? What’s the socioeconomic status of the recipients? Is this equitable? Where in the city do the recipients live? Do our neighbors trust them? I have so many questions.
Amanda: I’d like the extra info, but I’m good with Mission Able and Operation Triage.
Lorenzo: How about the food bank and BR3T?
(Note: BR3T is rent assistance and homelessness prevention.)
Alyssa: Can we get info on those, too? I want info on everything. BR3T funding is evaporating.
Jane: Maybe the consultant will come in under budget, and we can find $5K for PALS pet food from there.
Josh: I’m fine with the staff recommendations.
Shane: Me too.
Matthew: Me too.
Bottom line: This will come back at a city council meeting. Staff will bring back lots of information on Mission Able, Operation Triage, PALS, the food bank, and BR3T.
City Council this week: The DATA CENTER FAILED! You already know how it turns out, but I’ll give you all the spicy details on how we got there. (Also an SMPD staffing study and the new strategic plan for 2027.)
Let’s jump in:
Hours 0:00 – 8:04: The sordid tale of the death of the data center! Enjoy all the gory details, plus a smidgen of Council’s strategic plan for 2027.
This lasted for almost 5 hours. By my count, there were about 66 speakers, (plus another 44 at the public hearing that started twenty minutes later, and another five speakers at the 3 pm workshops).
Of the 66:
11 in favor. They break down as follows:
I am Maberry, just a guy trying to make a zillion dollars
I am Maberry’s lawyer
I am a guy from Kissing Tree who has gotten involved in local politics over the last six months. I see this as being pro-business!
8 of us are union workers, all wearing matching orange shirts. Maberry promised to hire union workers to build this thing. We’re going to talk about why unions are generally good.
55 speakers opposed. The basic arguments:
Data Centers use too much water, and we’re in a historic drought, and climate change is going to dry out Texas further.
Data centers use too much electricity, which requires even more water
Data centers pollute the environment in general industrial ways
Approving this will not prevent a different one – ERCOT has stated that they’re committed to just growing the grid to meet demand.
There is not a significant gain in jobs
Listen to the people! Can you believe how many of us showed up tonight?!
About 3000 people signed an online petition against this. That’s more than most of you got in votes, when you were elected.
Emotional or spiritual arguments towards conservation, or talking more generally about AI
If I had to guess, there were about 300 people hanging out on the lawn outside the meeting, but not everyone spoke.
A couple specifically memorable comments:
Please don’t destroy my way of life. My family has put everything into this farm.
I worked at a data center. It’s basically a remote job, except two days a year when you work in person.
How will the waste from the closed loop system with all its chemicals be safely disposed of?
Study from International Energy Agency: Each MHW of energy uses 1850 gallons of water per day, onsite and offsite. Since Maberry’s is going to be 375 MWH, this would be 693K gallons of day.
John David Carson: yes, it’s true, I want to put in a data center next door to this one, too. But listen guys: mine’s going to be so much better! There’s gonna be homes, and a green space, and a data center, and you’ll just love it! Vote this other guy down though, please and thank you.
(I listened to everything, but I confess that I played it at 1.75x speed.)
Citizen comment lasts until 10:52 pm. Fortunately, the data center is the very first item.
March 2025: Maberry wants to rezone his land to build a data center. There is a huge outcry from the public. P&Z denies the rezoning.
August 2025: The rezoning goes to council. It needs 6 votes to overturn P&Z. Maberry only gets 5 votes.
January 2026: Maberry re-applied for his rezoning to P&Z. This time P&Z approves it. This means that Council only needs 4 votes to pass it.
February 2026: Activists successfully file a “valid petition” with signatures from residents within 200 yards. So Council is back to needing a supermajority (6 votes) once again.
These are all the data centers (that I’ve heard about) trying to get built in Hays County:
Maberry, the one that Council will vote on tonight.
Carson properties. He talked at Citizen Comment, above.
There could be more – these are just the ones I’ve heard about.
The presentation:
It’s mostly the same presentation that we’ve heard for the past year.
All the concessions that Maberry is going to put in the restrictive covenant
How he’ll mitigate the noise
How it’s going to be a closed-loop system that uses less water than a field full of single-family homes.
Wouldn’t it be worse to put homes out there?
Yes, it’s a lot of energy used, but it comes from the entire state. It’s not drawing on our power plant in particular.
It’s a LOT of property tax income.
Council approval of the rezoning will require 6 votes, because of the valid petition.
A “valid petition” is a very specific thing in Texas – if you get enough signatures of land owners within 200 feet, the rezoning has to pass with a supermajority. The activists successfully got enough neighbors to trigger this.
….
The public hearing: Another chance for the public to weigh in!
Same arguments, minus the union workers who all went home. This time it’s 2 in favor (Maberry and his lawyer) and 42 opposed.
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Finally, we get to the Council Discussion. It is 1:20 am. Holy moly.
Right out of the gate, Lorenzo moves to postpone.
Listen, this is insane. I was flabbergasted: literally hundreds of people have carved time out of their schedule to show up tonight, and this item has been kicked around for over a year. Nothing is being rushed through here!
Everyone wants to know why?
Lorenzo: There have been a lot of questions raised! We need to do our due diligence!
Amanda is spitting nails with fury. “That’s it? That’s your reason?” She’s seething with contempt. “Postponing would be torturing people. Stop playing with people. This is unserious and disrespectful.”
(She is 100% correct. Postponing is wild.)
Alyssa: Was the newest version of the restricted covenant available to everyone? Answer: Basically no. We got it late this afternoon, and just kinda threw it up on the message boards. [Read it here, if you want. It’s pretty short.]
Jane: Postponement is a bad idea. If you sincerely need more time, you can vote yes tonight, and then we can delay the second vote.
Josh: I don’t get it. What’s the point of postponing this?
Lorenzo: I campaigned against single family sprawl. Right now, it sounds like we’re picking between a data center and single family homes in the middle of nowhere. I want to know if there’s a 3rd option.
Alyssa keeps speaking in coded language: “This does not exist in isolation. I am stuck on the larger conversation. I am not clear on the ripple effects.”
She is referring to John David Carson’s property, immediately next door. Legally, council members can only talk about the item on the agenda. She wants to be able to talk about both projects, simultaneously.
Matthew sounds genuinely stressed out: I used to be a yes. Things are changing and the water facts are weighing heavily on me. I truly don’t know how I am going to vote.
Amanda speaks to Matthew directly: I know you’re wrestling with this. But these people have been fighting for a year. It would be cruel to drag it out.
Matthew considers this and says: I don’t want to torture everyone by postponing, so I’ll vote no on postponing. But I might vote yes tonight, so that I can buy myself more time before the final vote.
The vote on postponement
Should Council kick the can down the road, till March 31st?
Thank GOD that failed. Good lord.
In hindsight, the pivotal moment of the night was when Amanda spoke directly to Matthew and got him to switch his vote to “no” on postponement. Otherwise, this tortured mess would have gotten prolonged for another six weeks.
This vote is a very bad look for Jane, Shane, and Lorenzo!
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Onto the real discussion
Alyssa makes a motion to deny. This means a few things:
“No means yes” – if you vote no, you’re voting for the data center.
This would be the denial that never happened last August. Denials mean that the developer can’t come back for six months. Denials are important.
Jane: I feel good about the closed loop water system. But now I understand about the offsite water, from the electrical usage. That’s new to me.
Alyssa: This is a local pre-emption issue. Everything is always a local pre-emption issue. We’re always being screwed over by the state.
Note: “Local pre-emption” means that the state keeps taking powers away from local government. It’s a giant fucking problem in Texas.
However: for data center permits, it’s the counties that have been pre-empted, not the cities. Literally, San Marcos can vote no on this data center because we still have that power. The real fight is at the county level.
…
Amanda: I worked for five years at the capitol. I felt rage most nights. There are some very conservative forces up there. But listen: there are seeds of a bipartisan movement. Very conservative Republicans are actually saying things about water conservation that I agree with. The problem is that the legislation does not meet until 2027, and that might literally be too late. There are 400 data centers now, and 1000 more that want to get permitted before 2027.
College Station just denied a data center. Their mayor said, “Even if it’s not our water and our electricity, it’s drawing on someone’s water and someone’s electricity.” At least we can say no to one, tonight.
Alyssa: whoopsie! I zoned out. Amanda, can you catch me up real quick on what you just said?
Amanda: [throws knives with eyes] Are you serious?
Alyssa: tee-hee!
[Very tense, weird moment passes]
Matthew: Can they de-annex and build it anyway? Answer: Not without Council approval.
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Sidebar: Why WOULD anyone consider voting for this!?
The reason that councilmembers are struggling is because this city is very, very broke. This is their own fault. Or more specifically, it’s the fault of Lorenzo, Matthew, Shane, and former council member Saul Gonzales.
Last summer, staff gave a very serious budget presentation. Council was presented this choice:
For months, Council told staff to plan on a structurally balanced budget. They geared up for a tax hike. If you own a $300K house, you were going to pay an extra $10/month.
Literally at the last second, Lorenzo got cold feet and immediately, those four switched their vote.
So instead, we did this:
and now we’re like this:
That is why this data center is so tempting – the city budget is strained to its limit.
(I’m still angry at them for that vote. Read it all here.)
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So let’s vote already!
The vote to DENY the data center (ie yes means no):
Famous image by now – you’ve seen this all over social media! This specific proposal is dead.
Josh: Thank you to everyone. The consensus tonight is what changed my mind. But look, I want to solve city budget problems, and this would have brought in a lot of money.
Translation: I might vote for the next one.
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My $.02:
I sincerely think that Matthew was wrestling with the decision, and voted yes to buy himself more time.
I sincerely have no fucking clue what Lorenzo is thinking.
Carson’s data center proposal is clearly waiting in the wings
This is a big win for democracy. This was the right vote, because we live in a democracy, and the people expressed their opinion loud and clear.
But this was not the big win yet for water. I know that’s depressing. This was the easy part – really – because it happened within the rules. This was a symbolic victory.
The real victory will be getting the rules changed so that counties can regulate data centers.
Listen: if you signed the petition, or showed up on Tuesday, you must understand this. You have not saved anything yet. You need to join the data.center.action.coalition and Save Our Springs and SMRF, and bring all of this amazing energy to the county and state level.
Get Ruben Becerra to challenge data centers in court. Attend Hays County Commission’s Court on Tuesday, 9 am, at the town square.
Pressure all candidates running for office to take a stand on regulating ground and surface water. Make the November elections about water and data centers*.
This was a win for democracy, but it was not yet a win for the environment. Celebrate, but then buckle down again. Please.
* I mean, the November elections should be about data centers, but also ICE and Trump and all the other dumpster fires burning right now.
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Special note: As long as we’re talking about clean water, let me plug this SMRF petition against polluting the Freeman’s Ranch with rocket fuel because some company wants to test rockets there.
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Item 12: The Strategic Plan
Next September, Council will pass the 2027 budget. This is the first step.
Backstory:
As I mentioned above, last summer Lorenzo, Shane, Matthew, and former council member Saul voted for this:
The big theme for the Visioning workshops was this: “All the departments are making drastic cuts and it’s really awful and will make voters mad.”
As the kids say: we’re in the “find out” part of FAFO.
…
Anyway, Council heard a lot from each department, and then they put their own goals into the Vision Board.
Here are the major changes from last year, by category:
Category 1: QUALITY OF LIFE & SENSE OF PLACE
Identifying and addressing accommodations for community members with disabilities
Getting more town halls and videos from the city, and more zoom access to town halls
More public art, from diverse cultural perspectives.
Work with downtown partners
Work on making outdoor spaces more kid-friendly
Get some sort of volunteer home repair thing for home owners experiencing hardship
Get some affordability standards in our Public Improvement Districts
Category 2: ECONOMIC VITALITY
Safe working conditions and better wages for workers when the company is getting tax breaks.
Get some businesses in town that will create kid-friendly spaces
Figure out some way to work on the dire child care situation in town
Be realistic about our budget woes
Category 3: PUBLIC SAFETY, CORE SERVICES & FISCAL EXCELLENCE
Work on SMPD and SMFD staffing and training, in light of the budget woes.
Partner with Texas State on downtown safety
Make bills payable on the 1st and 15th, and have a better grace period
Category 4: MOBILITY & CONNECTIVITY
do something about replacing the scooter rentals
Maybe a free bike program!
Better bus shelters and seating.
Note: The free bike thing reminds me – we desperately need sidewalks all the way down to the high school. We do not need kids skirting the edge of 123.
Category 5: ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
Get the word out on the water rebate program
Work on our drought stages
We are all thinking about the data center, but we can’t say “data center” because of legal rules around only discussing what’s on the agenda.
……
And here’s the whole thing, with changes highlighted:
Category 1: QUALITY OF LIFE & SENSE OF PLACE
Category 2: ECONOMIC VITALITY
Category 3: PUBLIC SAFETY, CORE SERVICES & FISCAL EXCELLENCE
Category 4: MOBILITY & CONNECTIVITY
Category 5: ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
…
There were some other items – improvements on Linda Drive, some certificates of obligation to take on debt to fund some big projects, some nominations for boards and commissions – but council zipped through everything super fast. So I will, too!
SMPD is a rather large chunk of the general fund. The General Fund this year is $126 million:
and SMPD is the biggest chunk of that, at 22%.
…
Obviously there’s huge disagreement within the community on this point. Maybe you think all cops are trigger-happy jerks with daddy issues, or maybe you think cops are upright citizens with a zest for being helpful. Most likely, you’re somewhere in between.
At any rate, as a community, we have to come together and make decisions.
Here’s a question: does SMPD need more staff?
(First off, yes: all of our city departments need more staffing.) But anyway, in order to answer this in an unbiased manner, we hired some consultants.
Here’s what they say:
and
You can read the whole report here (scroll down past the slides). It’s very detailed.
Here’s just a highlight of the slides:
Afternoons and late night is when they get the most calls.
The university has its own separate police force with its own rules. But they sort of overlap and cooperate around the edges:
So how long does it take for police to show up?
They do not show up to minor car crashes anymore, because of those budget cuts we’ve been talking about.
The consultants made a big deal out of “proactivity”.
It’s basically the things that get done in between crises. If you’re always swinging wildly from crisis to crisis, you can never harass brown people for broken tail lights assist the grandmothers when they have a flat tire.
Next up is Dispatch:
That seems very sympathetic.
and admin:
Ok.
And investigations:
Sure.
…
Loose, disorganized thoughts:
It’s good to have this information
This whole report is inherently pro-cop, because it is pro-status quo. This is not a conversation about how we can re-imagine safety in San Marcos. However, a majority of San Marcos does support SMPD.
All departments are being squeezed right now. If we conducted staffing studies on all departments, we’d get big needs across the board.
Hello all! New developments that might kill the data center, and the Rooftop looses its booze permit. Also would you like a new HEB up north, and a new train overpass down south? I thought you might!
Let’s jump in:
Hours 0:00 – 7:47: The Historic Preservation Plan, some data center developments, Rooftop loses its alcohol license, and some fun items: a new HEB and a new train bridge.
I didn’t write up the 3 pm workshop, but feel free to check it out here.
Loose pit bulls attacked my dog and me, and neither SMPD nor Animal Control nor the animal shelter was willing to do anything about it.
The KZSM issue (2 speakers)
The KZSM issue: KZSM 104.1 is the local non-commercial FM station in town. (They’re great! Check them out here!) As the speaker says, “We bring the voices, music and culture of San Marcos to the airwaves, streaming and podcasting.”
The city used to also have it’s own radio station, KZOS. In 2022, the city agreed to shut it down and transfer the assets to KZSM. This was a big generous move, and everyone was happy.
But the city didn’t finish the transfer. Like, it fizzled out and lost momentum? You can still listen to KZOS here, and the city is apparently still paying streaming fees and music licensing fees.
The speakers say: “We have tried for more than a year to explain the facts to City staff, to ask them to correct the website and to keep its promise. That is, to transfer the hardware, software and music library to KZSM. That will turn off the KZOS stream… We could use the money the City is paying for this, since we have to pay these fees out of whatever we can get from donations.”
I gotta say: I’ve never heard of KZOS and it’s wild that the city is running a tiny, redundant little radio station.
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Item 9: Historic Preservation Plan
Last time, community members had a lot of concerns about the plan. The plan has good details, but it is short on the implementation part. What’s prioritized? What’s first? Is this all going to get shelved and forgotten? Etc.
Staff brought back a summary of all the complaints:
Basically, they’re adopting all the red and blue comments. If you want to read all 39 pages of comments, knock yourself out, here.
There’s going to be an oversight committee that governs the rest, and quarterly reports to Council.
The vote:
I think Matthew and Lorenzo did not yet trust the implementation process.
If you’d like to read the plan yourself, enjoy it here.
On we go!
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Item 10: Post Road and Uhland
About a year ago, this little strip came to Council for rezoning:
It was these eight plots of land:
And the owner wanted to convert them to condos.
Notice how the top corner lot is missing? That brings us to today:
There it is! It’s the missing corner lot. They want to rezone this corner to match the rest. Great!
March 2025: Maberry wants to rezone his land to build a data center. There is a huge outcry from the public. P&Z denies the rezoning.
August 2025: The rezoning goes to council. It needs 6 votes to overturn P&Z. Maberry only gets 5 votes.
January 2025: Maberry re-applied for his rezoning to P&Z. This time P&Z approves it.
Now it’s back to council. No vote tonight – it is just a public hearing.
Two notes:
1. Every step of the way, there has been a massive outcry from the community. There are hours of citizen comments, town halls, letters written, etc. A lot of people are furiously opposed to this data center.
2. There are a lot of data centers being built in Hays County.
These are the local data centers I know about so far:
There are 14 more speakers: 3 in favor, 11 opposed. (Some speak twice.) I’m combining all the major points from earlier in the meeting and this public hearing.
Here are the major points from the activists:
Data centers use an unbelievable amount of water. We’re in a severe drought.
They use a ton of electricity, and electric plants also use a lot of water
This is not going to create many jobs.
You’re ignoring the comp plan!
You’re ignoring hundreds of people.
It’s extremely difficult to win lawsuits against companies that use more water than they’re allowed to use.
This will cause ERCOT to grow the grid, which uses more water.
Crystal Clear Water is in water-debt and in financial debt. But they’re legally obligated to provide water that they literally don’t have.
This is a violation of the Land Development Code
The optics of this are horrible.
And the arguments from the supporters:
These will be union labor jobs!
We’re willing to make lots of concessions. You can’t negotiate with any of the data centers in the county.
This petition thing is bullshit! (more below)
One neutral person speaks: he is from the Crystal Clear Water Board. Crystal Clear is the folks who would be providing water to Maberry. He says:
Maberry claimed that he’s putting water use in the restrictive covenant, and that the water use is about half of what it would be if he built homes out there.
As a board member, I would like to clarify: he only has a residential use agreement. He’s not allowed to substitute for commercial, industrial, or agriculture uses. Strictly residential.
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Two technical points that might swing this decision towards the activists?
Maybe this does apply. Maberry did withdraw their zoning request after that meeting in August.
2. The Valid Petition
In Texas, there is something called “a valid petition“. This is a way for neighbors to prevent a rezoning. If 20% of the neighbors within 200 yards sign a valid petition, then the rezoning requires a supermajority at City Council.
So this is what the neighbors have done.
This might be a game-changer, because the data center can probably get 4 council votes, but not 6 council votes.
One side note on the valid petition
It is mostly signed by residents who own farms next to this site. But the last signature on the petition is not from a home-owner:
Carson Properties signed the petition. They also want to build a data center, right next to Maberry.
The home-owners are the ones who did the hard work of collecting signatures. But the petition definitely benefits Carson’s ability to build their data center.
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Let me address the activism directly:
The activists are in an impossible position, because Texas politics is very rigged:
They care deeply about the environment and critical drought in central Texas. (Me too!)
Data centers, as an industry, pose a real existential threat to the water resources in this state.
Texas has entrenched systems that make it virtually impossible to fight the data center industry.
This is a slow-motion trainwreck, and it’s really awful.
Maberry is a lightning rod for all this activism and anger, because he uniquely made the dumbass decision to get his land annexed into the city. So out of 400 data centers in Texas, this one can be fought.
A victory against Maberry is symbolic, but not much more than symbolic.
Here’s what Council’s decision is:
My two cents
I am a little exasperated with the activists, because I don’t like extremely hyperbolic language. I hear lots of people overstating the situation – “people will die!” and “the river will run dry!” and “there is literally no reason to vote for this!” – and none of that is accurate.
But far more than that, I’m angry at the state government. We’re in this no-win situation because they refuse to do their job.
I think the real path forward probably involves following:
Legal battles from water districts who are legally obligated to supply water that they do not have.
Legal battles from counties that have no mechanism to regulate natural resources
Activists and environmentalists who are extremely concerned about the drought.
ERCOT needs to continue to transition to low-water energy sources like wind and solar
the Texas Water Development Board needs to step in to help coordinate all this.
My sincere hope is that the activists see themselves as part of a much larger fight than just Maberry’s data center.
What does Council say?
Barely anything! There’s no vote tonight.
Here’s where we are on the timeline:
The big discussions and votes will happen on February 17th and March 3rd.
That is when all the wheeling-and-dealing will take place. Stay tuned.
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Sidebar: Valid petitions are also called Tyrant’s Vetos, and they are generally not good:
Valid petitions are an obscure zoning procedure that have been used to try to obstruct a Dallas hospital expansion, student housing in Bryan, and Habitat for Humanity houses in Austin.
Lefty groups generally do not like them because they are anti-democratic and a big NIMBY problem. They make it incredibly easy to block things (like affordable housing) that a city needs to support its residents. Last year, the Texas legislature fixed it to some extent.
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Item 12: Rooftop on the Square
This is one of those clubs on the square. It’s located here:
and looks like this:
They first opened in 2012. Based on their webpage, it looks like this:
It advertises “first class vibes”, and looks like a good place to get blackout drunk and get felt up. Maybe that’s your jam!
It is NOT the jam of P&Z.
So, the Rooftop first pissed off P&Z back in August, 2025. The Rooftop is technically a restaurant and not a bar. (Can’t you tell?) So they have a restaurant alcohol permit, not a bar alcohol permit. This means that they’re supposed to be selling at least a little bit of food and pretending that patrons are not merely trying to get blackout drunk.
They were not selling any sort of food.
Here’s how Code Compliance writes things when they are really fed up with a business:
In August, due to all these shenanigans, P&Z gave the Rooftop a 3 month alcohol permit.
They were supposed to:
Get some sort of food service up and running
Get that nasty health violation stuff cleaned up.
Keep your nose clean for three months.
December, 2025: they did not keep their noses clean!
1. The food stuff is fine: first they worked out something with Bagel Bros, and then replaced Bagel Bros with a food truck. Great!
2. The health inspection stuff is so-so: they mostly got this stuff cleared up, but Matthew Mendoza toured the place and found it disgusting, even after they’d been working on it for awhile. He reported seeing these little buzzballz liquor bottles stashed all over the place:
3. Did they at least keep their noses clean? No. They got NINE police calls during that same three month window.
To be fair, some of those were initiated by Rooftop staff. You don’t want to ding an establishment for calling the cops themselves. But the one that is a really big problem is Halloween weekend.
If you remember, that was the night that a person was killed downtown. That killing did not specifically involve the Rooftop, but a bunch of other stuff did.
So what did involve the Rooftop?
Here’s the police report from that one night:
Here’s the fire marshal report about why the Rooftop was shut down that night:
The fire marshal said to the manager, “I can either close you down, or we can empty the place and count how many people leave.”
The manager said, “Let’s empty the place out, and count!”
No one can recall the exact number of people who came out of the Rooftop, but the fire marshal decided it needed to be closed down.
Finally, and most damning of all, this police bit from after the shooting:
I mean, dude. DUDE. You’re letting in underage dudes with guns in their pajamas! While you’re on probation! If you’re trying to smooth things over with the grown-ups at P&Z, this ain’t the way.
Over the next few weeks, there was some mixed communication between SMPD and the manager, as SMPD tried to locate the Rooftop surveillance video for the night. It got automatically erased after seven days.
Bottom line: due to all this, P&Z denied the alcohol permit. No booze for you, Rooftop.
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Which brings us to tonight!
The Rooftop is appealing the P&Z decision. This means that it will take a supermajority of councilmembers to overturn the P&Z decision. In other words, it takes 6 votes out of 7 to overturn the denial.
At the public hearing, there are four people from the Rooftop who all try to plead their case:
We’ve gotten LOTS of renewals since 2012!
Sometimes WE’RE the good guys who called the cops!
On that crazy Halloween night, all the bars were shut down, not just us!
We have metal detector wands and dress codes.
Listen, it was a mix up about the security video from Halloween night.
And then there was the lawyer, who was mostly very repetitious:
This is arbitrary and capricious!
This is hearsay!
Quasi-judicial setting!
Not clear and substantial new evidence!
You can’t make decisions on emotions! P&Z does everything emotionally!
She seemed to be mostly threatening to sue if they were shut down.
Ok then.
What does Council say?
Matthew is a hard no: “When I toured your establishment, you all were very dismissive of all these problems. There were ball bottles stashed everywhere. There was a nasty patch in the kitchen that still wasn’t clean.”
SMPD:
This was not arbitrary and capricious.
It’s not hearsay when it comes from a police report.
We were at the Rooftop because of a fight – not arbitrary nor capricious.
The fight spanned two locations.
They were the only bar closed for overcrowding, before the shooting. All the other bars were shut down because of the shooting.
Manager:
We wand and pat down every person that enters!
Two separate lines for 18+, 21+
There’s a dress code! No baggy pants, no sweatsuits, no jerseys, no do-rags.
Alyssa: Sounds a little bit racist!
(I had that same thought.)
Code compliance:
We flagged a LOT of problems in September.
Since then, they’ve been very cooperative. Almost everything code-related is cleared up.
Lorenzo does his very Lorenzo thing, where he gets bogged down in overly technical amendments. “What if they try to outsmart us and serve food during the daytime and not serve food at nighttime? We should require two full time periods! No, we should limit their hours of operation! But what about the Superbowl on Sunday? Are they trying to pull a fast one on us?” None of this goes anywhere.
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Other amendments that they consider:
Making the alcohol permit last 4 months. (this passes)
Make them 21 and up (this does not pass)
They must hire more off-duty cops (I don’t remember).
At one point, Josh Paselk asks SMPD Chief Standridge point blank: “Can you all work with this business? Do you feel okay about them?”
Chief Standridge: “We can work with ANYBODY. We will always do our best to keep the community safe! That said, the rest of the downtown businesses are sick of underage kids getting blackout drunk and puking everywhere.”
I’m paraphrasing a little bit, but that’s the gist of it. The Downtown Business Association would like to see some accountability among the bar owners.
Two hours later, the vote to restore the alcohol permit for the Rooftop:
<drumroll…> (Remember it needs six votes to pass)
That’s not a supermajority! IT FAILED.
The Rooftop has lost it’s alcohol permit.
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How long until they can reapply and reopen? The city lawyer said he needed to stop and look it up, but then we never found out. It might be one year.
PDD stands for “Planned Development District” and it means that there are all sorts of fiddly rules about what they can and can’t do.
What these guys want to do is….
a FOURTH HEB?! what? Didn’t we just break ground on our THIRD HEB?
Guys, this is like an embarrassment of riches. We’re going to be swimming in HEBs. You’re going to have so many high quality groceries from this good-hearted company, you’re not going to know what to do with yourself.
Here’s where it will go:
Everyone is a hard yes.
Just one thought: they’re not going to try to shut down little HEB, are they? It’s so well-loved.
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Item 5: New train bridge!
Maybe you’ve noticed that we have a lot of trains in San Marcos. Here are the railroad lines through town:
This is why the trains sometimes completely stop – they’re merging or crossing tracks or avoiding another train.
Here’s the south side of town:
The tracks are running parallel to I-35. When there’s a train stopped, you have to go to Wonderworld to go over it (or find the end of the train and go around it).
But change is a-coming! Good news, Centerpoint fans! YOU get a train bridge!
You lucky dogs. Now don’t spend it all in one place.
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Item 8: Downtown security
SMPD is trying to keep downtown from spinning out of control on the weekends.
They struck a deal with Texas State PD: Texas State is kicking in $150K to help pay for officers downtown.
Just this once, though! It’s not an ongoing deal.
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Item 15: Appointments to boards and commissions
We were already six hours deep in the meeting, and I didn’t know any of the names of the people being appointed, and so I didn’t listen very carefully to this bit.
We’re covering ALL of January. It’s a lot! All the action is at P&Z and the workshops:
How are we going to handle this EMS clusterfuck?
Are we going to start charging entry fees to out-of-towners at the river?
What the hell happened at P&Z last week, anyway?
(The actual council meeting was pretty breezy!)
Note: Between the ice on the ground and ICE terrorizing communities, our attention is getting pulled in a lot of directions. If you’re here, I appreciate it.
Here we go:
Hours 0:00 – 2:35: All little things. A PID, the Historic Preservation Plan, a little campus church, a senior citizens center, and bitcoins. Pretty quick, breezy meeting.
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: The details on the EMS mess. What’s San Marcos going to do next?
Only six speakers! (Contrast that with P&Z – about 100 speakers. We’ll get to that!)
Topics covered:
Community Action is stoked about renewing the lease for the senior citizens center
Please postpone the Historic Preservation Plan
Oppression is violence. Your neglect is violence against us.
A list of names of people killed so far by ICE
Reappointing the chair of the San Marcos Housing Authority
That was about it!
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Item 17: River Bridge Ranch PID
River Bridge Ranch is way out here:
It came up in December, here, when it shrunk to the new, smaller size.
They want to put homes out here. It’s part of this larger cluster of developments that have been in the works for years and years:
I have never liked ANY of these, whatsoever. They all fail four of the five criteria:
Price Tag to the City: Will it bring in taxes that pay for itself, over the lifespan of the infrastructure and future repair? How much will it cost to extend roads, utilities, on fire and police coverage, on water and wastewater?
Hard fail. Cities lose money on remote developments. The developer may cover the initial cost of infrastructure, but the longterm maintenance is on us. Plus running fire, EMS, and police services way out there. The property taxes will not cover the cost to the city.
Housing stock: How long will it take to build? How much housing will it provide? What is the forecasted housing deficit at that point? Is it targeting a price-point that serves what San Marcos needs?
It’s claiming to provide affordable starter homes. This is something that people want, yes.
Environment: Is it on the aquifer? Is it in a flood zone? Will it create run off into the river?Are we looking at sprawl? Is it uniformly single-family homes?
Not on the aquifer. Somewhat close to the river. But it’s textbook sprawl, and sprawl is bad for the environment. Most likely entirely single-family homes.
Social: Is it meaningfully mixed income? Is it near existing SMCISD schools and amenities?
The San Marxist Special: Is it a mixed-income blend of single family houses, four-plexes, and eight-plexes, all mixed together? With schools, shops, restaurants, and public community space sprinkled throughout? Is it walkable?
Ha, no.
River Bridge Ranch also has a weird backstory. Here’s what seems to have happened:
2008: There’s some 563-acre property called The Mayan Tract, and the owner wants to be annexed into San Marcos. Martindale agreed to this.
2014: New owners buy the property.
2018: The new owners file a lawsuit to challenge the validity of the annexation. Martindale joins the suit.
2020: The suit gets settled in 2020. This thing called a PID is formed as part of the settlement. (We’ll get to what a PID is.)
Max Baker described the settlement as “They strong-armed the city into forming a PID.” He was on council then, so he was there. But he also tends to use inflammatory language to describe things. So that may not be the universal opinion – I have no idea.
2021: Lennar Homes purchased the land and they get the PID.
In other words, people have been trying to do something with this land for 10-15 years, unsuccessfully.
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So what is a PID?
PID stands for “Public Improvement District”. What this means is that all the home owners will pay a surcharge on top of their property taxes. That extra money is used to make the neighborhood nicer.
Here’s how much people might pay:
So that is on top of your regular property taxes, which is 65.15¢.
I don’t love PIDs. They are a little bit of a shell game – you can list houses at a cheaper price, because you didn’t have to include the cost of the neighborhood improvements. Instead of paying extra on their mortgage, the homeowners will pay extra in yearly taxes.
It’s fine as long as all home-buyers are perfectly wise and have access to enough wealth. Late-stage capitalism, eh?
Why is this coming to council?
Lennar Homes wants to change the terms of the PID. They want to reduce the size to match the new smaller footprint, and then increase the dollars.
The new size:
(Also discussed in December.)
The new PID budget:
Like I said earlier, I think this project is terrible sprawl. It will cost the city more to maintain services out there than we’ll bring in, in property tax revenue.
No vote tonight. The PID changes will get voted on at the next meeting.
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Item 18. San Marcos Historic Preservation Plan
We’ve seen it before, back in October. We’ve been working on this for awhile:
They tried hard to get community input:
What’s it supposed to do?
Great! What else?
If we adopt this plan by mid-February, we qualify for a $5K grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
We’re out of money, anyway. We’re using some consultants and we’ve given them just about the whole sum.
HOWMEVER!
The letters have been coming in, and people have a lot of complaints.
Here’s what I gathered: What’s here isn’t bad, but it doesn’t give a clear roadmap of how to proceed. – What should be prioritized? – What’s the order of operations? – How do we implement this big list of lofty ideals, on a shoestring budget?*
Staff protests that they’ve had a TON of outreach, and that these complaints can be addressed, even if we pass the plan first. They seem worried that this will drag out forever.
Bottom line: Staff is going to compile a comprehensive list of all the proposed changes, and try to categorize them as short term or long term, and bring it back.
* Hat tip to Ryan Patrick Perkins for walking me through this.
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Item 19: Rezoning
This church is right by campus:
It’s used by Christ Chapel and United Campus Ministry currently.
It’s right between campus and mini-Target:
It sounds like it will be a 6-story apartment complex, owned by the church, with church things on the ground floor.
The minister gives his pitch:
The church is going to keep owning the property. We won’t sell it.
They’ve thought hard and long about this
It’ll be great!
If we don’t get this rezoning, we’d have to sell it. Who KNOWS what you’ll get!
Will the old church building itself get torn down? No one asks this question. I assume it’s a goner. (Maybe they’ll let the new building eat the church, like Sanctuary Apartments did, a few blocks over?)
What do I think? Let’s check the five criteria!
Price Tag to the City: Will it bring in taxes that pay for itself, over the lifespan of the infrastructure and future repair? How much will it cost to extend roads, utilities, on fire and police coverage, on water and wastewater?
Very low cost to the city – this area is all built up and well-supported already. I don’t know if it will bring in much tax revenue, because it’s still owned by the church. But no concerns here.
Housing stock: How long will it take to build? How much housing will it provide? What is the forecasted housing deficit at that point? Is it targeting a price-point that serves what San Marcos needs?
I have no idea on any of this. It’s a pretty tiny lot.
Environment: Is it on the aquifer? Is it in a flood zone? Will it create run off into the river? Are we looking at sprawl? Is it uniformly single-family homes?
All of Texas state is uphill of most of San Marcos, and it’s mostly paved over. The pre-existing situation is terrible for flooding. This does add more pavement.
Social: Is it meaningfully mixed income? Is it near existing SMCISD schools and amenities?
Extremely walkable and close to the university.
The San Marxist Special: Is it a mixed-income blend of single family houses, four-plexes, and eight-plexes, all mixed together? With schools, shops, restaurants, and public community space sprinkled throughout? Is it walkable?
Well, no, but you wouldn’t really put a San Marxist Special in the middle of downtown.
On the whole, I’m fine with this! You want density in your downtown.
They lease the building from the city. It’s time to renew, for another ten years. It’s an old building, so they’ll let us know if there are any concerns on the walk through.
Great!
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Item 20: Bitcoin scams
What’s the opposite of a warm, nurturing senior citizen center? Maybe scamming old people with a bitcoin ATM?
Apparently there are Bitcoin ATMs:
You can buy and sell cryptocurrency on these.
Google tells me they’re all over San Marcos:
As a crotchety old Marxist, I don’t like it. But here we are.
We’re going to require stores to put little warning signs by all the BTMs, saying “hey! Here’s some red flags that you might be getting scammed!”
It’s better than nothing, but wouldn’t it be nice if we had a functional federal and state government that cracked down on predatory scams?
[Sidebar: I don’t understand how bitcoins are untraceable. Isn’t the whole point that it’s a block chain that grows a little bit longer with every transaction, recording its whole history of where it’s been so far?]
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That’s it for the regular meeting! Now comes the spicy stuff.
The San Marxist 