Welcome back! It’s time for a big, important EMS conversation. Also CDBG money and some neat photos.
Let’s go:
Hours 0:00 – 1:56: Let me say right up front: sorry about all the digressions. CDBG money, and a bunch of cool photos.
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: The EMS discussion. This is the weighty part of the meeting.
That’s a wrap! See you in two weeks.
Citizen Comment:
Three people spoke.
Main topics:
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Item 13: $740K in CDBG money
“CDBG” stands for Community Development Block Grant. This is money that San Marcos gets from the federal department of Housing and Urban Development.
Local nonprofits apply to San Marcos for the money. Today is a rough draft of how to allocate the money to the nonprofits. The final decision will be in July.
Because it’s federal money, there are a bunch of constraints on how it can be spent.
First is Public Services. This is capped at $111K.
These are all the nonprofits that applied, and the amounts that staff is recommending:
So there are definitely some weird ones, right?
Business and Community Lenders: apparently this is a brand new nonprofit. City staff said that it was all or nothing. If they only got a partial funding, they wouldn’t be able to get up and running. Since we couldn’t do the whole $100K, they got stuck.
HOME Center: HOME Center does great work. They do extremely intensive case management work to find stable, longterm housing for chronically homeless people. They navigate severe mental health issues, addiction, physical health, you name it. They find long-lost birth certificates needed for paperwork. Etc. It’s weird to give them only $5K. (This has been a flashpoint before.)
Here are the other two categories, Projects and Administration:
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A few other details:
Jane: Yeah, we’ve been getting $770K since the 90s.
2. There are actually two pots of money: CDBG and HSAB.
“HSAB” stands for Human Services Advisory Board. This is city money, given out in grants to nonprofits.
It’s always been a mess, having two separate pots of money that overlap in purpose. So they’re trying to align the two processes. Next year, it will be more like a single process, but we’re not there yet.
3. CDBG money requires a LOT of paperwork and tracking by the nonprofits, because it’s federal money, so there is federal reporting. HSAB money is much simpler.
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What does Council say?
Alyssa: Is there a scoring matrix? Outcomes? Deliverables? Survey results of people who are served by these nonprofits? Public opinion of the CDBG process is not good. Are there metrics on how many nonprofits can’t navigate the application process?
Answers: Yes on scoring matrix. Yes on outcomes and deliverables. But we don’t require the nonprofits to survey their participants. They do submit quarterly reports, though.
Amanda: Why is HOME center so low?
Answer: We tried to prioritize immediate need versus longterm need.
Lorenzo: We’re asking HOME to do a lot of federal paperwork, for only $5K.
Here’s the summary of the HOME application:
Amanda: Can we cover transportation and medical needs, at least? Can we bump them up to $12,200, out of that extra money that is showing up?
Answer: Yes. But not tonight.
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Jane: We’re spending $60K to light the plaques at Dunbar on the History Walk? Shouldn’t that come out of the Arts fund?
Answer: It’s considered a park amenity, to light the path. And this is coming out of the Projects category, not Public Services.
Josh: Does the applicant list stay stable over the years?
Answer: No, the number of applicants has increased. More nonprofits are willing to deal with all the massive paperwork for CDBG.
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There’s no decision tonight – this is just giving staff feedback on this first draft.
In July, Council is going to see the HSAB money and CDBG money side by side. So then they can say things like, “Ok, HOME asked for $35K from one and $30K from the other. What if we give them all $65 from HSAB instead?”
That’s the goal – to be able to divvy up both pots of money using one united big picture of all nonprofit applications.
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Item 11: Time for a digression!
This item was in the consent agenda, and was approved without discussion.
I just want to share with you some gnarly photos in the packet:
Pretty cool, right?
Weirdly compelling!
I see you, structural steel elements of Clarifier No 401 at the Wastewater Treatment Plant. You look tired.
What a composition.
In this triptych, we ask ourselves, “Who is really the rusty one? This wastewater treatment plant …or ourselves?”
Who among us is not threaded by decaying bolts?
Hey, soldered plate with tiny cobwebs: me too.
These photos are part of a larger collection that can be found at this exhibit:
Disclaimer: do not go visit that exhibit!
End of the art tour. Let’s go back to the council meeting!
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Item 5: Entry fees at Rio Vista:
They finalize this fee structure for Rio Vista park:
And they brought up entry bracelets!
They’re looking into ordering non-digital entry bracelets for locals. First one would be free, but you’d have to pick it up in person.
Thanks, Parks Department!
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Item 16: Salvage from Demo Sites
I am not sure what’s getting built here, but the Pennington Funeral Home is getting demolished:
This is on Comanche, one block up from Little HEB.
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Let’s take a quick field trip! That isn’t the original Pennington building.
That’s right!
It’s ye old Rogers Building, on the corner of Hopkins and LBJ! Right now it’s some bar called Bazaar.
It changes hands so often that you can date yourself, according to what was there when you moved to San Marcos. I personally moved here during the All Nighter Diner era.
After that, it was the Gray Horse Saloon for awhile, I think? It’s been the Wine Bar, and Vodka Street, and maybe something else.
Back in 1986, it was a sporting goods store:
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ANYWAY. We were talking about the Pennington Funeral home, on Comanche.
They moved out, and the fire and SWAT team used the empty building for training purposes:
After all that, Mayor Jane and Matthew Mendoza decided to see if other nonprofits could repurpose parts of the building. Like: take a ceiling fan! take some filing cabinets! Use these beams in your home rehab project! Etc.
It sounds like some organizations were able to salvage some good stuff.
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Which brings us to tonight: what if all demolitions were scrapped for parts, first?
Sure, why not?
Lorenzo: As long as this doesn’t get bogged down in red tape.
Note: yes, this is a real danger. You don’t want to delay things by a week for some dusty 30-year-old ceiling fans.
Matthew: maybe we can offer a discount if the owner lets others salvage building parts!
City Lawyer: As long as this isn’t the dangerous buildings.
So city staff will bring something back.
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Item 17: Community Partnership
Back in 2018, the city formed a committee with SMCISD and Hays County. It’s been a LONG time since the committee has done anything.
Alyssa has been on the committee for years, and they’ve never met.
Today’s item is to brainstorm agenda topics for the committee, to justify firing it back up again and scheduling a first meeting.
Ideas:
Matthew: Can’t we just meet and plan topics?
(That is my question, too! This seems unnecessary.)
Jane: But what if the topics are only relevant to TWO entities?
(I don’t know why Jane is overthinking this. Surely adults can handle that however they want.)
Josh: What if we invite Texas State to join?
Answer: Back in the day, President Trauth turned us down. We hadn’t re-extended the invite under President Damphouse, but I guess we could.
Lorenzo: that would just be the Core Four all over again.
Answer: Sort of yes, sort of no.
Jane: Hays, SMCISD, and the city are all elected officials. Whereas if Texas State joins, it would be an appointed official.
Bottom line: They’ll reach out to Texas State, and maybe someday there will be a meeting.
Citizen Comment: Five people talk.
They all talk about EMS, so I’ll put their comments down below.
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The backstory:
There are nine different Emergency Service Districts, called ESD #1 – #9, which make up Hays County. Some are fire, some are just EMS, and some are both.
The districts with EMS are 1, 2, 3, 7 and 9:
Hays County ESD #1: Dripping Springs, Driftwood, Henly.
Hays County ESD #2: Buda
Hays County ESD #3: San Marcos
Hays County ESD #7: Wimberley.
Hays County ESD #9: Kyle and all the country bits around those towns.
This map of the districts is hard to read, but it’s the only one I could find:
In 2020, Wimberley and Buda were running their own EMS.
The other three ESDs all shared an EMS service. We all contracted out with San Marcos-Hays County EMS, (SMHC-EMS), a nonprofit EMS.
Great!
In 2022, SMHC-EMS decides to start forming a union:
It took them about 2 years, but they finally negotiated a new contracted with their board of directors which included things like this:
Great!
About 30 seconds later, ESD #1 and ESD #9 both cancel their contracts with SMHC-EMS, and vote to open their own EMS departments. Pretty much textbook union-busting.
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So San Marcos is stuck holding the bag, by ourselves. What do we want to do? Last August, we commissioned a study with some consultants.
January 2026: The consultants give us three choices:
There’s a long conversation about collective bargaining and labor rights, and whether a City-based EMS could be granted some form of negotiating power.
A majority of council votes for Option 3, but they ask city staff to look into the laws around collective bargaining and EMS.
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Let’s talk about union-busting for a sec.
Forming a union is a big hassle, and so my guess is that the grievances with management were significant. (I don’t have any details, though.)
Pre-union-busting, how much did EMS cost everyone? Here’s what I found from 2022:
ESD #1: $3.3 million in taxes (here)
ESD #9: $3.84 million in taxes (here)
San Marcos: $4.22 million in taxes (here)
Total: $11.36 million of taxpayer money to SMHC-EMS.
Post-union-busting, we now have three separate departments. Here’s what tax-payers are paying in 2026:
ESD #1: $8 million in taxes (here)
ESD #9: $10.2 million in taxes (here)
San Marcos: I can’t locate this for the life of me. Let’s ballpark $9 million in taxes, for our City EMS, based on the consultant study from January.
Total: $27.2 million of taxpayer money, to three separate EMS departments.
Bottom line: Way to go, asshats. You’re spending $16 million extra of taxpayer dollars, but at least you’re screwing over the people who keep us alive in an emergency.
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Which brings us to tonight!
The point of the workshop is to update Council on how it’s going, planning for a new City EMS department.
The staff presentation
First off: city staff say there is absolutely no way to give EMS collective bargaining power under state law.
Police and Fire Departments can unionize, which is known as “Civil Service”.
But EMS doesn’t qualify as Civil Service, because San Marcos is too small:
You have to have 460K people or more. So Austin can do this, but not us.
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The first step is to hire an EMS Chief:
After this, we’d start hiring everyone else. Current SMHC-EMS workers would have first dibs on applying, and then we’d open it up to anyone else.
There’s a whole lot of medical mumbo-jumbo about credentialing, medical directors, clinical operating guidelines, physician consultations, etc, which I honestly do not have the background to follow.
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What do people say at Citizen Comment?
Five people speak:
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What does Council say?
Alyssa: How did you build the job description for the EMS Chief? What’s the timeline?
Answer: We looked at other city EMS chiefs, and based it on those. We want someone who can build an EMS department from scratch, and also build lots of partnerships. Maybe down the road, we can do mobile community healthcare or something. The hiring process will probably take two months, but it’s flexible.
Amanda: Austin uses a process called “Consultation” instead of collective bargaining. Can we do that?
Answer: Austin has a special bracketed carve out in state law. We may be able to do something called “Voluntary Consultation”.
Note: What is Voluntary Consultation?
It sounds like a soft version of collective bargaining. Here’s an explanation about how it’s used in school districts:
While the law explicitly prohibits collective bargaining, many school districts have adopted consultation policies allowing school boards to meet and confer with educators about educational policy and employment conditions. These consulting agreements are related to the concept of collective bargaining but constructed in such a way that the input given is considered advisory rather than legally binding, and therefore does not qualify as a collective bargaining agreement by law. The school districts are not required to act on the input received from the employees and final decisions on matters discussed through the consultation process are decided by school board members.
So it’s not binding, and it would be voluntary by the city. At best, it’s a good-faith effort to foster communication. At worst, it’s thoughts-and-prayers.
City Manager Reyes: this means that certain city employees would get a perk not offered to the rest of city employees. Something to consider.
(Note: We could offer Voluntary Consultation to everyone. Just saying.)
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Amanda: Is it viable to keep the current contract in place to 2028?
No one really answers this, but this is the central question. Should we build an EMS department from scratch in 5 months? Or should we see whether it works to just keep our contract with SMHC-EMS?
There’s this chart:
Sorry about the screenshot. I know it’s tiny and hard to read. (It wasn’t in the packet, because it was only requested the day before.)
I think this chart is supposed to show that it saves more money to build our own EMS department by October. But it really doesn’t.
Lorenzo makes an excellent point: this chart supposedly compares City EMS and SMHC-EMS. Some of the numbers should be identical either way – for example, the amount of revenue from ambulance rides should be the same. But they’re not – they’re off by $1.3 million. (This is the first row of the chart, comparing the 1st entry and the 4th entry.)
In several places, numbers that should match don’t actually match. This is probably because nobody actually knows the real estimates, and they used different sources to get projections in the different columns.
Point being: no one can really say which will be cheaper, the current contract or a City EMS.
Amanda: This is not solely about revenue. I’m focused on the quality of care and taking care of our community, not taking the cheapest option.
But Lorenzo wasn’t arguing that we should go for the cheapest option. He was arguing that we haven’t really thought through just staying with the current contract. It is a viable option, but we’re acting like it’s off the table.
My read is that staff came in with a lot of momentum towards building a new EMS department. There just isn’t a lot of oxygen in the room to discuss continuing the current contract.
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Josh: I value people and communication more than I value the nitty-gritty details!
Josh is both right and wrong. He’s correct that when people with power operate in good faith, and value their employees and value communication, you have the best possible scenario. But he’s also wrong: when people with power stop operating in good faith, the only leverage that employees have are the details that are spelled out. When things go sideways, the devil is in the details.
I think Josh believes “Look, I have good intentions and I like being a good boss. That’s enough to make sure we’re in the good scenario!”
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So what’s the timeline?
If everything was put in motion today, it would take 6 months for the state license to come through. Then we’d coordinate with Medicare, Medicaid, DEA, etc etc.
Matthew: Where would we put city EMS?
Answer: We’d talk to their landlord and try to rent out their current building.
Hopefully everything would be ready to go on October 1st, but otherwise we’d have a contingency plan, which we also would build out.
Jane: How long did ESD 1 and ESD 9 take to create their own plan?
Answer: ESD 1 took 6-8 months, ESD 9 was a bit longer.
Jane: can we compare benefits plans?
Answer: We’re working on it.
Note: It’s not just benefits. At the January meeting, they also mentioned looking to make sure seniority transfers over. Otherwise you are going to lose your most experienced EMS workers.
Alyssa: This is big and complicated, and there are so many ways for it to go disastrously wrong if we rush it.
Fire Chief Les Stevens: The Medical Practitioner oversees these transitions and would not allow care to lapse for one second.
Amanda: In the next legislative session, maybe we can lobby for fixing the Civil Service rules?
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Ok Council:
1. Who wants to stick with City based EMS?
Yes: Matthew, Shane, Jane, Josh, Amanda
No: Lorenzo and Alyssa
Alyssa says that she is just not yet satisfied with the open questions about labor protections.
2. Who wants to look into Voluntary Consultation as a lite-collective-bargaining?
Yes: everyone.
No: no one.
So there you have it.
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At the very end, the union rep Zach Phillips weighs in again:
Alyssa: Will we put a union rep on the hiring committee for the EMS chief?
Answer: Absolutely. Yes.
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Final notes: How are we going to pay for this? We’re already looking at a $4 million budget hole. As Zach said, this will not generate revenue.
My guess is that that will be a big, messy conversation, and so there just wasn’t time to roll that conversation into the this workshop.
What a mess! Sure do wish we hadn’t done this last year:
But here we are.
Aaaand we’re back! Spring break is over and we’ve got a $4 million budget hole looming for 2027. Also we’re going to start charging out-of-towners to swim at Rio Vista this summer. Enjoy?
Let’s dive in!
Hours 0:00 – 3:05: the North campus area plan, some 2027 Budget planning, paid parking at the Lion’s Club and admission fees at Rio Vista, plus some little items
They shuffled the Council calendar in March to avoid Spring Break. This means we’ve got another Council meeting this Tuesday, instead of taking a week off. See you all next week.
Citizen Comment:
Two people spoke at 3 pm, and four at 6 pm.
Major points:
*sadly this blog doesn’t come out in time for this to be helpful. It was yesterday.
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Items 1-3: Q1 finances
Every three months, the city reviews its finances. This one covers October, November, and December 2025.
Here’s the summary by fund:
Green is good! Great. Investments are fine, the audit came back clean, everything is on track.
The budget is still very lean this year. This report just means that we’re sticking with the plan – nothing new is going wrong.
No one had questions.
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Item 4: North of Campus Neighborhood Area Plan
Area plans are supposed to help a neighborhood nail down its unique flavor, so that it doesn’t get overrun by change, while maybe also solving some of its problems.
Here’s the first batch of neighborhood area plans:
(Read ’em all here, if you want.)
So far we’ve seen Blanco Gardens and Downtown. I think Dunbar/Heritage is getting split into two plans?
Today’s Plan: North of Campus Area
They mean this patch here:
zooming in:
It’s actually pretty small. It’s a very Texas-State-feeling part of San Marcos – the Pie Society strip mall, a few bars and restaurants up LBJ, and a lot of small apartment complexes and rental houses.
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They did a lot of outreach to get community input:
It’s very hard for cities to connect with residents and get their input. People are busy. But this is what it looks like when a city is trying.
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Here’s what people like about this neighborhood:
Seems about right to me.
Here’s what maybe needs some love:
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What does Council say?
Basically nothing! Today was just an update. This will get a public hearing on April 21st, and get a vote on May 5th
They thank staff for working so hard on all of this.
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Item 14: A wee little annexation
TX-DOT owns a little building here:
They’re on septic. They want to be annexed into the city so that they can tie into city sewer.
Everyone says okay.
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Item 15: Budget Policy Statement
The city takes most of the year to build the budget for the next year:
The big problem is that we don’t know how much tax revenue we’re getting until pretty late in the game. So there are a lot of guard rails to help city staff plan the budget in the meantime.
March is Budget Policy time. This is where Council sets a bunch of expectations for staff to work with.
It doesn’t always work! Council can change their mind later on, and send the budget into a tizzy. Like last year, when this happened ten minutes from the final vote:
We were heading to the right until literally the last ten minutes of a ten month process! It killed me a teeny bit. But at least city staff tried their best.
So now we’re here:
That $4 million red X is the consequence of the decision to drive off the left cliff in the diagram above.
Here’s what we’ve had to do so far:
(Those slides are all from the February budget policy workshop.)
Ok, but wait. How much were we going to have to raise taxes on home owners? Like hundreds of dollars or something?
No. Look at the last two columns:
Listen: if you ever hear someone complaining about the city, chime in and say, “Yes! Can you believe how short-staffed they are? Why won’t Council pass a structurally balanced budget?”
Thank you for being my propaganda army.
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Everybody on council wishes real hard that we could bring in more businesses and get more sales tax revenue from businesses!
Unfortunately, that solution does not yet exist, today in 2026. We’ve got some lines in the water, but in the meantime, we are squeezing our city dry. (Also, if your “economic incentive program” amounts to giant tax breaks, you haven’t solved your problem. You’ve just subsidized private business interests.)
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Also! Also! The $4 million shortfall does not include EMS. The EMS conversation will happen next week.
Stay tuned!
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So! What does Council want to do for 2027?
It is true that San Marcos home owners are often broke, and the thought of $10 extra per month can add one more layer of stress to a dangerously thin budget. This is not a wealthy city. People do not generally have a lot of savings to cover a health care emergency or car crash.
My $.02: Yes, we should raise property taxes slightly. I know San Marcos is broke, but the brokest people of San Marcos do not own their own homes, and the wealthiest parts of San Marcos can afford $10/month.
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Items 16-17: Downtown TIRZ
“TIRZ” stands for Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone.
Here’s the Downtown TIRZ:
It started back in 2011. The TIRZ is a tax deal where the city splits the downtown tax revenue with them. They get to keep part of their tax revenue, provided they spend it on making the downtown nicer. The idea is that then the downtown gets a boost, and starts bringing in more tax revenue, and everyone wins.
The TIRZ is almost over. It ends in December 2027. So now they’re just wiggling little final details here and there, like these from December.
This time they’re asking for $200,000, to pay for a Downtown Alley Lighting Plan.
Sure, why not. Everyone says ok.
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Item 18: Paid Parking at the Lion’s Club
Last year, we started charging for parking at the Lion’s Club parking lot.
It’s free for residents, but you have to go register here. Registration is kind of finicky, because you have to upload photo ID. (You can do it in person if you hate that kind of thing.)
Last summer, it was just residents to the city limits who got in free.
Now it’s going to be free for everyone in pink, blue and purple:
Discussed here, back in January. (The purple is really pink+blue.)
The idea is that this roughly includes everyone who feels like they’re part of the San Marcos community, even if they don’t pay city taxes.
Everyone is fine with this.
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Item 19: Fees for Rio Vista Park
Last summer, we fenced off the park around the falls:
It was temporary fencing, just for the summer.
The reason we did that was because of crowds:
and litter:
It just destroys your river. You only get one river. Plus there were tons of medical and public safety emergencies – lots of drunk people and heat stroke.
Furthermore, it was super expensive to staff the parks. Most of the visitors were from out-of-town, but they didn’t shop at San Marcos stores or eat at the restaurants. San Marcos residents avoided the river, because it was so packed and unpleasant.
Hence the fence. This is Summer 2025:
Last year, it was still free to get in. City staff just stopped everyone at the entrance on holidays and weekends, and went over the park rules about no alcohol, no single-use containers, etc.
Anecdotally, it helped a lot! I liked this solution a lot: fenced-but-free.
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They decided last fall to keep the fence. But in light of the huge hole in our budget and all, they also decided to start charging admission for out-of-towners.
Here’s the plan:
Note: we’re still just talking about holidays and weekends over the summer.
What this means is if you want to use the park on weekends or holidays, you will have to register or somehow prove your residency, just like with the parking at the Lion’s Club. (SIGH.)
Here’s what you’ll need:
They’re going to try to use software that automatically registers everybody who registered for parking already, and everyone who has an Activity Center pass.
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What does council say?
Amanda: How does it work? What if a resident just shows up empty-handed?
Answer: They can just show their ID at the gate! This summer is all about educating people.
Matthew: I live in Rio Vista neighborhood! At the neighborhood meeting in 2023, everyone said they wanted fees and they wanted to use their phone for entrance.
Amanda: I know people on Field Street who never heard about this meeting.
Note: People from Rio Vista have actually reached out to me, your friendly marxist blogger! I was told that they actually prefer not to bring their phone to the river. Their suggestion was an entry bracelet or something that can be worn while swimming.
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I am 90% sure that the Free Zone for the park is going to match up with the Free Zone from the Lion’s Club parking:
In other words, if you live in San Marcos, or if you’re 78666, or if you are zoned for SMCISD, you’re in the Free Zone.
The vote on the fee plan:
Amanda wants to keep the river free for everyone, because it’s a natural resource that should belong to everyone.
(I agree. Fenced-but-free!)
My other concern is that the profit won’t actually materialize, after you subtract out the cost of the computer software needed to register everyone and accept payments, and the cost of employee time. In other words, I’m not convinced this will even pay for itself.
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Item 22: Making council meetings more efficient
A few weeks ago, the Data Center city council meeting ran until 2:30 am. The very next meeting, Jane proposed cutting Citizen Comment time slots from 3 minutes to 1 minute. She got raked across the coals, including by moi, because it’s a terrible suggestion and the timing looked really bad. It looked retaliatory, for sure.
Nevertheless, it’s true that Council doesn’t work well at 2:30 am. No one is at their best.
Today is supposed to be more open-ended: does anyone have any great ideas for making meetings shorter?
Shane: We used to cap Citizen Comment at 30 minutes.
Answer: Legally, we can’t do that anymore. The state passed a Citizen Comment law since then.
They go in circles for awhile about trying to limit opportunities to speak. Right now there’s:
Lorenzo: Maybe we can keep someone from speaking three times on the same topic?
Answer: you’re going to chase your own tail trying to police that. You’re going to waste more time arguing with private citizens about whether or not they were on topic or not. That is a fool’s errand.
Amanda: First off, this has only happened three times or so in the past few years. It’s not actually happening all the time. Second, there’s a rule on the books already – should a meeting need to be continued on another business day, you can do that. We can already do that, if we want.
Jane: There’s some technicalities around that.
Amanda: Sure.
Note: as far as I can tell, this is the only real solution. If it’s 11 pm and there’s hours of meeting left to go, cut it off and pick up again at 6 pm on Wednesday.
Alyssa: There is a ton of research out there, if anyone can do a lit review.
Jane: Maybe our city clerk can hit up the message board for city clerks in Texas, and see how other cities handle it?
Lorenzo: What if we stop having staff presentations altogether? If we just all read the packet ahead of time, we don’t need staff to go over it at the meeting.
Answer: The presentations are for the public, so that they can follow what’s going on.
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They go in circles for about an hour. In the end, they decide to crowdsource the issue.
If YOU know how to make their meetings shorter, they’d like you to fill them in, please and thank you very much.
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!
Citizen Comment
Two big topics!
There were 41 speakers, and 40 of them covered the two topics above.
Main points on Topic 1:
Main points on Topic 2:
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.
If you want, you can dive deep here.
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Item 8: SiEnergy
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.
…
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:
I don’t know how to evaluate that!
I’m not clear on how generous this is.
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!
What’s next?
Basically, you have homework. Or maybe I do.
Here’s where you can find all the proposed changes. And here’s the City Council message board and this will be the dedicated thread for their questions the Land Development Code.
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Item 14: Should Citizen Comment be reduced from 3 minutes to 1 minute?
Everyone is super mad about this! And with good reason!
Background: During a city council meeting, here’s how you can speak up:
Citizen comment can run long. Since I’ve been blogging:
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:
Jane speaks first! Here’s her argument:
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!
For the record: I’ve been hard on Lorenzo lately, between his tax rate mess and his motion to postpone the data center decision.
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:
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.
Back during the pandemic, San Marcos got a bunch of Covid money. First there was $6 million in Covid Relief, in 2020, and then $18 million from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in 2021.
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:
What should we do with this extra money?
Here’s what staff recommends:
Operation Triage and Mission Able are both nonprofits that go in and fix houses.
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.
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: Results from the SMPD staffing study.
That’s the meeting!
Also it’s Primary Season – Early voting is on!
Here’s all the voting days, times, and locations. Hays Dems has info on candidates.
It’s REALLY hard to find a voting guide with recommendations, and the ballot is really long. Locally, I went with these from Erin Zwiener:
Citizen Comment:
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:
55 speakers opposed. The basic arguments:
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:
(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.
….
Item 8: The Data Center
Back story: Discussed previously here, here,here,here, here, here, and here.
Here’s the super short version:
These are all the data centers (that I’ve heard about) trying to get built in Hays County:
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.
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.
….
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!
….
Onto the real discussion
Alyssa makes a motion to deny. This means a few things:
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.
…
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.)
…
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.
…
My $.02:
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.
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.
…..
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.
…..
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:
(I’m really not exaggerating. See here.)
and so now our city budget looks like 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
Category 2: ECONOMIC VITALITY
Category 3: PUBLIC SAFETY, CORE SERVICES & FISCAL EXCELLENCE
Category 4: MOBILITY & CONNECTIVITY
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
……
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!
The San Marxist 