I sat down to write up this item, and got so bogged down in the backstory that it became clear that that had to be its own post. With that out of the way, the story becomes less important.
The foreground issue is a Memorandum of Understanding between the city and the county, about an East side park called the Cape’s Dam Complex. The background issue is whether or not the dam should be rebuilt.
Melissa Derrick moved to strike a clause from the main statement: “whereas the scientific community has pointed out that the flow race of the main channel and the mill race are important for the protection of river wild rice etc etc,”
If you don’t know the background, this clause sounds totally innocuous, and Derrick sounds like an anti-science nut. But this is actually the false environmental propaganda, in my opinion. (I’m basing my opinion on the San Marcos River Foundation.)
Anyway, the amendment passed and the clause was struck.
Max Baker moved to insert SMRF into the groups where communication is a high-priority. This passed.
The county clearly thinks that the dam ought to be rebuilt. I don’t think the city has decided yet. Or rather, they’re split. “Renovate/rehabilitate the dam” may mean different things to different councilmembers.
The MOU passed. Only Baker voted no.
Onto the next-most-interesting items!
Items 19 and 27: Miniature goats! Spear-fishing!
You are now allowed to have miniature goats within city limits. Congrats! You must have a pair, so that they don’t get too lonely and hence noisy. You’re not allowed to sell your goat cheese or goat milk. Your goat shed must meet certain criteria. The billy goats must be neutered, lest ye develop a third goat.
Shane Scott likes to gig fish and doesn’t want to have to get a permit, because it’s not a spear-spear. Can gigging be exempt from the permitting process? Others pointed out that all fishing needs a permit, aside from the special spear-fishing permit. This was just a discussion item, and four voted yes to have city staff research it and bring it back. But it did not appear that four people would actually want to change anything.
Everything else:
Reviewed the process for Community Block Development Grants (CBDG) for the coming year
10% discount for San Marcos residents at the Kissing Tree. Will it be raised to a 25% discount? Probably not.
Purple heart trail, ethics review training, etc.
DONE.
I skipped the work session again, this week. I’m still getting my sea legs on this whole thing, and the Cape’s Dam entry took a long time.
In the early 2010s, City Council was very beholden to developers, and approved a bunch of very controversial apartment complexes. This is when the The Cottages and The Retreat were approved, and most contentiously, The Woods. (Which now has a different name – Redpoint – but everyone still thinks of it as The Woods.)
The Woods was built on property where the San Marcos River meets I-35. It would have made prime, beautiful park land. The city had the opportunity to buy the land a few years before this controversy, and declined. (That makes me angry every time I think about it.) But in 2013, City Council allowed approved The Woods to be built there.
The Woods was to be long and skinny, and was to be placed between the Blanco Gardens neighborhood and the river. It would completely block residents of the neighborhood from being able to walk over and access the river. Blanco Gardens is an old neighborhood – traditionally poor, Hispanic neighborhood, just east of 35, and historically has been neglected due to racism. The Woods was going to be marketed to college students from families who could afford the newest apartment complex. The racism, classism, and riverfront destruction massively angered the city.
Here’s a map of Blanco Gardens, and the addition of the apartment complex.:
There was a huge outcry and wave of activism against the Woods, and council approved it anyway. (There was a second complex right at the headwaters that was barely defeated at roughly the same time.) As a result, that city council was mostly voted out of office and replaced with more progressive councilmembers. (Thomaides and Scott were both voted out in this wave.)
But the apartment complex got built, and currently exists.
2. The Flood
THEN! In 2015, the Woods was partially built when the Memorial Day Floods happened. The Blanco River rose 40 feet. 11 people died in Hays County. Homes and property were destroyed. The community was traumatized. It was a mass natural disaster.
Along with several other neighborhoods, Blanco Gardens had several feet of standing water. The town uniformly believes that The Woods caused Blanco Gardens to flood.
Is that true? It’s hard for me to say.
The flooding came in from The Blanco river primarily, not the San Marcos River.
The San Marcos River does meet up with the Blanco River just past this intersection, so when the Blanco floods, the San Marcos River backs up.
Apparently in four hours, the San Marcos River went from 700 cubic feet of water per second to over 70,000 CFS.
So, the water came in from the north part of the neighborhood, from the Blanco river. The issue is whether or not The Woods prevented Blanco Gardens from draining into the San Marcos river.
I saw an engineer’s presentation to the city claiming that The Woods did not cause Blanco Gardens to flood – and I frankly didn’t buy it. It smelled like computer modelling bullshit to me, with too many simplifying assumptions to be worth anything. Furthermore, he kept trying to use The Woods as if it were already built according to plan, as opposed to a messy construction site with sand bags over the drains to keep construction detritus from entering the waterways. He seemed to feel that the null hypothesis was that The Woods wasn’t a problem, and the analysis was too hard and complex to decisively disprove that.
At the same time, the amount of water that came down on Hays County that day is beyond comprehension, and it’s also true that it would have been a mass catastrophe no matter what. But Blanco Gardens might have had less damage.
The net result: The Woods still exists, but there is a lot of anger that is loosely divided into political camps, focused on this stretch of the river.
3. The damage to Cape’s Dam
What does all this have to do with Cape’s Dam? Behind The Woods, the river splits. This is manmade, dating to 1866. The river was dammed, and a cement channel was built to power a mill. The dam holding the main river is Cape’s dam, and the this cement channel that goes to the left is the Mill Race. The Mill Race is 1/4 mile long, and then they meet up again.
(Honestly, the geography of this thing is difficult to figure out, because it’s so hidden from the public view. And there are other nearby dams and channels that make it tough to figure out from Google WorldView. But I’m pretty sure this is right.)
Before the flood, the Mill Race was used mostly by a private company, Olympic Kayak Company, to rent out kayaks and such for recreation. In theory, it’s public land, but it’s never been publicly accessibly in any way, except via this private company or insider knowledge. I think both parts of the river were used – under the dam on the main river, there’s supposedly a beautiful swimming hole, and the mill race channel was nice and calm for people learning to kayak. But I’ve never seen any of this for myself.
In the 2015 flood, Cape’s Dam was severely damaged and the area was no longer safe for recreation. I remember hearing that it would cost millions to fix it and the Army Corp of Engineers recommends removal of old dams, not repairing them, so that the environment can return to its pre-existing state. At the time, there was federal disaster money available to remove the dam (but not to repair it). In 2016, City Council voted to remove the dam.
That’s when the owner of Olympic Kayak Company, Ben Kvanli, got involved, because of course this might affect his business model, along with another guy, Sam Brannon.
My opinion is that they approached this in bad faith. The legitimate position might have been, “This portion of the river is wonderful for recreation. We are going to advocate that it benefits the community to have these opportunities. Let’s balance the environment and safety with the benefits of recreation.” But they did not. Instead they threw everything but the kitchen sink at the problem. They formed an organization, Save the SMTX River (which you can google and find their link), and launched a campaign. My memory is that they had scientists saying that the science was not so clear cut – that the 100 years of growth had meant that endangered darter fish now thrived and their habitat would be destroyed if the dam were removed. But as of 2021, I can’t find any trace of who this might have been. Links are broken, citations aren’t there, so I don’t know who this counterpoint is.
The other major argument they made is that this dam has meaningful historical significance. Again, what? It’s old, but no one can seem to find any name or any event, or any architectural significance, or anything that merits more than a plaque saying “Here be ruins of ye old mill.”
One thing that clouds this is that Kvanli and Brannon are vocal rightwing Trump-style supporters (although this drama slightly precedes the most aggressive of Trump’s wave). As my URL suggests, I’m positioned on the opposite end, and it’s hard not to let that color my perception of these events. It certainly affected the lens that I saw this through as it was unfolding.
4. The current holding pattern
The federal money to remove the dam expired, and Council caved and agreed to not-decide quite so quickly. Commissions were organized.
The Historical Preservation Society tried to get it designated as a historical landmark, but they were denied at by the Planning & Zoning commission, and my memory is that the meeting was entirely about the subtext: that the designation was a farce in order to force the dam to be rebuilt and privilege recreation above the environmental concerns.
As of 2021, a long slow planning process is playing out. How will we balance recreation and the environment? What are the different options and how much will they cost? This is probably the appropriate way to proceed. “Proposed rehabilitation of the dam” shows up in the vision documents, but I’m not exactly sure what that will end up being.
October 6th 2019, at the Visioning Study Work Session: Rockeymoore supported removing the dam Marquez supported restoring the dam. Saul Gonzalez wanted another opinion Prewitt supported removing the dam Melissa Derrick supported removing the dam Mihalkanin supported restoring the dam Jane Hughson said she was on the fence.
(Gonzalez, Derrick, and Hughson are still on the council.)
My personal opinion is that the recreation is important, the environment is important, and the historical significance is bunk. Remove the dam, and fund a solution that balances public recreation with environmental protection.
One big caveat: going forward, recreational uses need to be available to the public. It’s total bullshit that this one really cool stretch of the river has only been available through a private company, or people with insider knowledge.
The next two most important items are probably the Charter Review Commission and the Cape’s Dam MOU.
Item 1: Charter Review Commission
So, the city charter is like our constitution, I gather. It gets reviewed every four years. I think it can only be amended by public vote at the ballot box. A committee was formed, met over six months, and provided their final report to Council. Then Council decides which issues go on the ballot in November. (I might have this wrong, but this is what I inferred.)
Former Mayor Thomaides chaired the commission. Lots of connected people on there: Esther Garcia, Travis Kelsey, Zach Sambrano, Chance Sparks, Paul Mayhew and [Someone] Taylor. I’m less familiar with Garcia, Sparks and Taylor, but recognize Garcia’s name. Kelsey and Sambrano are on the Planning and Zoning commission, Mayhew used to be on the school board, and Sparks has apparently worked with lots of city managers thoughout Texas. And Thomaides, of course, was mayor until 2016, when he lost to Hughson.
On the whole, their recommendations did not seem to have any ulterior motive. They seemed genuinely to be thinking about the city as a whole. I haven’t read the charter, so I don’t know what they might have omitted, but at this point I have no qualms with their process.
Their 13 recommendations, loosely clumped:
Term limits: Council members would be able to serve three consecutive 3-year terms, and then they’d have to cycle off for a term. Mayor would be able to serve two 4-year terms, and then cycle off.
Baker, Scott, Garza, and Gleason were in favor of term limits. First, to limit the power of encumbency. Second, to have time to reflect on your decisions in office and see how they played out.
Hughson, Derrick, and Gonzalez were opposed – let the voters choose who they want. So that will probably go to the ballot.
Note: these are limits on consecutive terms, not term limits. Interestingly, Thomaides, Scott, and Hughson all have experience with cycling off. Former Mayor Thom/aides, the chair of the commission, is currently in one of these alleged periods of reflection. Scott also lost his council seat (maybe 5-6 years ago?) and got back on this past November. Has he grown and reflected on his choices back then? You be the judge. Finally, Mayor Hugh/son was on the council in the ’90s. She took 10+ years off before running again, circa 2010.
Currently the mayor serves two years, not four. The argument for the change was to free up the mayor from campaigning, and to align that election with presidential elections. Four of them opposed this, so it probably won’t be on the ballot.
(The combination of these two votes is weird: originally it was proposed that the Mayor should have two 4-year terms, and inadvertently they’re now proposing two 2-year terms. I hope that gets cleaned up at the next review session.)
Loosening a bunch of residency restrictions and council appointees. These seemed fine. It’s good for city managers and judges to live in town, but it does reduce the applicant pool. Some will be on the ballot, others kept as is.
Codifying some current practices around ethics investigations, Citizen Comment procedures, deadline flexibility, and cleaning up inconsistencies. Nothing else seemed momentous.
That’s all, but it took about two hours for them to get through all that.
Omissions I might have advocated for:
City Council meeting weekly instead of biweekly
City Council earning a living wage, to enable a broader portion of the community to be able to run for office
Well! The most interesting item turned out to be such a clear smackdown that it is more open and shut than expected. Item 28 was to re-discuss Cite & Release.
[Sidebar: if we’re having 6+ hour meetings every two weeks, when do we start thinking about meeting weekly for 3 hours, instead? This is dumb.]
Background: San Marcos passed a Cite & Release ordinance a year ago. Since 2005ish, Texas police officers have been allowed to give citations and court dates for certain nonviolent offenses, instead of arresting people and hauling them down to the station, and setting in motion the turmoil of having one’s life abruptly struck. People miss work, get fired, can’t arrange childcare, CPS gets involved, etc etc. It’s the kind of thing that tips people from “barely getting by” into “abject poverty”. Since then, C&R hasn’t been applied fairly – white people were getting cited-and-released, black and brown people were being hauled down and physically arrested. So after a HUGE campaign by Ma/no Ami/ga, we made it mandatory to use C&R for seven specific offenses, a year ago.
So, tonight? Councilmember Scott has put C&R on the agenda as a discussion item. It’s very nebulous: “Hold discussion on Ordinance 2020-18, Cite and Release and provide direction to the City Manager.”
First, Mano Amiga generated a ton of citizens to show up during Citizen Comment.
[Sidebar: Citizen comment is 30 minutes. Each person gets 3 minutes. 27 people signed up to talk. The Mayor asks the council if they are okay extending Citizen Comment Period. There was exactly one dissent: Shane Scott, who preferred to cut it off after 30 minutes.]
Anyway: the community members make many great points about the benefits of C&R, the inadequacy of the data after such a weird Covid year, and so on.
Six hours later, the council finally gets to Item 28. Shane Scott has to go first, because he put it on the agenda. He basically says “I’m getting a lot of phone calls about increased crime. We just need to give Chief Dandridge some breathing room!”
(Crucially, Scott mentions that he has not talked to Chief Dandridge about this.)
Everybody weighs in, in predictable ways. Derrick points out that the chief was hired after C&R, and said he supported it in his interview.
Finally Chief Dandridge weighs:
We need to be victim-focused. There is huge amount of victimization of violent crime in SM.
We are nearly 50-50 on violent crime vs property crime. That’s crazy. There’s way too much violent crime here.
Violent crime is NOT being driven by C&R. He quite clearly emphasizes and dwells on this point: He fully supports C&R. He has continuously supported C&R. It frees up his officers to make them available for more immediate concerns. A direct quote: “It would be a myth to suggest that our city is more dangerous due to C&R.”
He goes through the 7 categories, and gives 2019 vs 2020 numbers. (Drug paraphenalia, theft, disorderly conduct, pot, driving without a license, city ordinance, mischief.) All are steady or down. He gives a big caveat about how Covid complicates everything.
The SM/PD has a dashboard, available to the public, keeping track of C&R data. (I would link it but I’m not ready for a broader readership. It can be easily found via the city website.)
He will share a major plan soon. He has a lot of ideas. Two major themes for crime-reduction:
Community Engagement
Technology. Apparently we have a woeful 20 year old CAD system, and I can believe that it’s pitiful in terms of wasting everyone’s time and energy.
Basically, Chief Dandridge gave a statement that was perfectly clear and concise and laid to rest this issue completely. C&R is going to stay and is not up for debate.
The rest of the councilmembers weighed in, in predictable ways, and that was that.
Mayor Hughson did mention how she did NOT support C&R last year. I had forgotten that. She said that she wanted officers to have discretion. She says she still does, but she also supports the chief, who supports C&R, etc. So hers was a bit mealy-mouthed.
It was decided to postpone this topic until the Chief shares his business plan.
Incidentally, “business plan” for a police department is annoying. It’s not a business. Profit is not a consideration. “Strategic plan” would be better.
Work Session in the afternoon: Three items. Tax stuff, fiscal, and some Executive Session about a specific personnel issue.
Council meeting that evening: 31 items. Yeesh.
Charter Review Commission presentation. IDK?
Consent Agenda: items 2-16. That could shorten things considerably.
2. Minutes approval 3-4. Annexation and Manufactured Home zoning of the area north of the airport and 35. 5-6. Annexation/zoning of the old folks home near Red/wood 7-9. Fire Station by La Ci/ma annexation and voting 10. Clean Air ordinance (to deal with smelly factories) 11. Commercial scooters now kosher 12. Downtown TIRZ 13. Technology acquisition policy 14. Contract for test equipment for electric utilities dept. 56K 15. Hydro excavator for the Public Services Water people, 475K 16. Water treatment thing, 25K/yearly
Public Hearings: 17. 7 acres near Center/point 18. Staff presentation for CDBG block grant
Non-consent Agenda 19. Miniature goats!! 20. MOU on Cape’s Dam – is this contentious? 21. Enterprise Fleet to get vehicles for City Depts for five years, 1200K. 22. 10% discount at Kissing Tree Golf Club for SM residents? 23. Covid-19 Recovery Committee 24. Purple Heart Trail 25. Ethics Review Commission recommending ethics training for all 26. If you’re accused of an ethic violation, or you’re doing the accusing, you must be given rules of procedure for hearings within 7 days. 27. Spearguns in the River 28. Cite and Release discussion and direction 29. Grantwriter with help for Covid and future emergencies.
Executive Session 30-31: the stuff from the afternoon
Mobile Home park approved, north of airport, east of 35
Redwood affordable senior housing development approved
Fire department,
Tax contribution for downtown master plan
PID for Whisper tract
PD Victim of Crimes fund
Environmental Air Quality policy
Commercial Scooters are in.
Some other pro forma stuff.
There were like 34 items and it went till almost midnight, and that didn’t include the afternoon extra session, which I skipped. But finally I have completed one meeting!!
The second most interesting item of the night was Item 32: Paid Parking in the City Parks.
This came from the Parks and Rec Board as a recommendation. It was basically swatted down hard. The conversation was handled very well.
First off, everyone was against charging in Rio Vista parks. There’s barely any parking there already. It would push cars to park in the neighborhood. So the conversation was quickly restricted to the parking lots right by the Lion’s Club.
Second, everyone was strongly against charging residents to park there. It was basically just a conversation about whether or not to charge tourists to park.
Jane Hughson made all the sane points against this:
it would be a giant mess to implement a city parking permit program and get the word out to residents. Residents would constantly be showing up and either get charged or turned away to do some paperwork, or their pass would be in their other car, or they’d be riding in the car with their out-of-town guest, and so on. A million headaches.
Furthermore, it’s not even clear that we have enough of a tourist industry to pay for the headaches caused.
Melissa Derrick made the best points in favor, namely that the river is overused and we risk eating our own tail if we can’t find a way to protect it. Many cities with important natural resources seem to use a permit system just fine, like Florida beach towns or whatever. Why can’t we?
I hear what she’s saying, but somehow there’s a much steeper obstacle here in terms of awareness. Maybe just because every Florida beach town grapples with that same issue, and here it’s spotty. But it would be a huge mess.
Hughson puts a plug in for us to charge for football parking, though. That seems like low-hanging fruit.
The most interesting item of the night was clearly #29: Consider a Revised purpose statement for the Council Criminal Justice Reform Committee.
The CJR Committee was formed to address Cite and Release issues. Cite and Release has been adopted. Max Baker and Alyssa Garza are the two Councilmembers on the CJR Committee.
The CJR has been pursuing other topics that would fall under Criminal Justice Reform, and city staff has gotten prickly because the topics aren’t within the purview of the mission statement.
Tonight’s issue: to revise the purpose statement so that City Staff can carry out the supporting work. That is the text. As always, there’s a lot of subtext!
So how did the discussion go? Bert Lumbreras was arguing for procedure to be followed. It’s a committee that operates at the discretion of the council. City Staff serves the council. Therefore, the council needs to bless the new direction of the committee before City Staff can do its bidding.
Max Baker comes with a new proposed purpose statement. City Council tweaks it and seems on board with it. Hughson, Derrick, and Garza kick the wordsmithing around a bit.
Then Scott says, basically, why isn’t this committee over?
Baker and Garza explain that there are a lot more simmering issues still. Here’s where the subtext arises. Their take is that they’re being stonewalled by City Staff because these are controversial issues, and made to dot their i’s and cross their t’s with far more precision and wasted time than other committees.
The charitable take on City Staff is that they’re being CYA precisely because these are hot-button issues. They do not want to be perceived as acting without direction on controversies. Whereas when issues are boring, they can take more liberties without Council direction, because they’re not going to be on the hot seat defending their choices.
The uncharitable take is that yes, they’re stone-walling because they’re unsympathetic to the cause. 20 minutes later, on the next item, they ask for council members to come directly to them with Covid ideas because it’s simpler.
Scott asks the new Police Chief Dandridge what his thoughts are. He does not stay neutral. He explicitly tips his hand against the committee, saying this will take time away from the top items on his to-do list, a lot of which have to do with the recently killed and injured police officers, and the department trauma and repair. He also took issue with the merging of national conversations with local issues.
IMO, his failure to stay neutral when delivering his answer undermines his credibility on this topic. A bit of acknowledgement of issues of police racism and brutality would have really given him a lot more credibility when he listed the competing issues. Are the other issues real? Absolutely! Does he believe in them? For sure. But for his opening bid to be so dismissive of this committee is a giant red flag. He does not seem to buy into the idea that good reform is safer for officers as well as the community.
In the end:
they approve the new mission statement for the CJR committee. I don’t have the exact wording, but it involved Cite & Divert, working with the county, and increased police transparency where allowed by law.
Hughson lectured the committee about taking their priority list to the police chief and seeing where there are goals in common, and working with them instead of against them.
Hughson lectured Lumbreras about needing to inform councilmembers on which items are quick to retrieve and research, and which items are time-consuming. Councilmembers don’t know how the databases and systems are set up, and can’t necessarily predict the workload involved.
Side note: To google-proof or not? Do people have alerts set up for their name? Do I want people to read this while I’m still getting the kinks out? I don’t know!! (I decided to play it safe for now and google-proof names.)
That is my first time sitting through an entire city council meeting. Yowch.
tonight’s meeting was 6 hours long. I spent maybe 2 hours working on the agenda ahead of time, and I didn’t even get through it.
I still need to condense it into a post.
What kind of detail is helpful? Do people want a dialogue blow by blow? Should there be expandable links with all that detail?
I didn’t watch the afternoon session yet. So this is total, maybe a 10 hour commitment? That’s a lot.
Will I get more efficient at it? Look and know which items need to be watched?
Do I need to worry about staying anonymous? I should probably keep it polite-ish. Even if my rude version is funnier.
New plan:
Watch from 6-10 pm. The next 2-4 hours can be gotten during commutes.
It’s not ideal – it would be better to single out the hot-button issues to watch live, and save the less important ones for the commute. But I don’t think I’m willing to carve out more time than that. That can at least be my summer plan.
8. Buy some Athletic gear for G/ary Sports Complexes. (I’m google-proofing just because I don’t have my sea-legs yet on this blogging thing, and wouldn’t like it to be found prematurely. It is still being posted publicly. I just don’t think anyone is paying attention.)
9. A grant for 45K to the PD’s victim services unit.
10. Buying a small tract (.7 acres) for 210K in Blanco Vista, for wastewater.
11. 80K for electrical.
12. Bike lane stuff, 174K.
13. An “Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity contract” for demolition, for 125k, through a CDBG grant. That’s quite a phrase for a contract!
Finally, we’re on to public hearings! I’m definitely going to need to find some efficiencies in this bloggy process. This is taking forever and I’m not even yet listening to them drone on.
14. 72 acres to be zoned for mobile homes. East of 35 and just north of the airport.
15/16: Annex a bit into the city to hopefully be a retirement home, on the corner of Redwood and Old Bastrop.
17/18/19: La Cima fire station stuff. Annex it. Rezone it.
20: Downtown TIRZ presentation. This is economic development stuff involving tax breaks. Should I find out more? Or just keep plugging away for the sake of establishing a habit? I have a fear that if I expect myself to dip down every rabbit hole, this thing will balloon in size and get out of control.
21: More of 17/18/19: Make the Senior home qualify as low income housing.
22. Whis/per So/outh PID. Where is this thing? It looks like maybe it’s the same area as item 14? But much larger?
Done with public hearing. On to the non-consent agenda!
23: Pollution policy. Just wonky text, no presentation slides to thumb through.
Note: The actual packet that City Council gets is 1000 pages. Being on city council is a ton of work.
Maybe it is not feasible to do this pre-reading AND watch the damn meeting. Maybe it should be one or the other.
24. Motor-assisted scooters. Do we hate these? Are we talking about electric bikes here? Stand-up Vespas?
Interesting: my memory is that we banned these, because we didn’t want companies coming in and leaving rentable ones all over the place. Now it looks like we’re quietly walking that back, probably because it was a dumb ban and now some company is dangling some financial incentive. (I’m just speculating.)
Ah, I see. We banned them in May 2020. By June 2020, the university’s buses had to run under capacity and they wanted to use scooters.
JEEZ THIS TAKES SO LONG TO DO. Only 10 more items to preview, but alas, I’m out of time for now.
The San Marxist 