I went to download last Tuesday’s meeting, last Wednesday. The link was broken. I tried on Thursday and Friday, and again today. The link is still broken.
I am giving up. The world shall never know what my great opinions would have been.
However, the world is pretty indifferent to my great opinions on all the meetings I have watched and blogged about, so.
Well sheesh, this took me ten days to get through. And it was a miraculously short meeting, clocking in at just two hours. It was so unremarkable that I kept putting off watching the last 30 minutes.
Contracts for utilities were approved. A new HPC member was voted in.
Commissioner Scott had a few eccentric items:
1. City property should be auctioned off instead of thrown away when the city is done using it. And that the auction ought to favor San Marcos residents.
Which, fine. That is uncontroversial. The city’s response was, “Yes. We do this already.”
All the councilmembers competed to be the most enthusiastic and come up with more and more ideas. The staff patiently explained that all these thoughtful measures are already in place.
Finally it ended up that the only non-pre-existing part was the exclusivity of the auction for only San Marcos residents. Staff will look into it.
2. The second weird item from Commissioner Scott was a general discussion about work sessions and packet meetings. Apparently there used to be packet meetings, on Fridays, where council could hear presentations about the agenda and ask questions, prior to a Tuesday meeting. But no longer.
Commissioner Scott said that the constituents miss the packet meetings and want them back.
Mayor Hughson and Commissioner Derrick explained that they didn’t work very well. Councilmembers stopped showing up. It was impossible sometimes to finish reading the packet that quickly.
Bert Lumbreras chimed in that it didn’t allow councilmembers a chance to shape solutions, because they only saw the item a few days before the meeting. So Lumbreras had been the one to introduce work sessions in the first place, where staff can fully educate the council on an issue, and council can give direction before something is presented at a meeting for a vote.
Everyone agrees they love the work sessions.
Commissioner Derrick points out that there will be a new council after November, and how about letting them decide?
Commissioner Baker wants to be allowed to solicit experts to weigh in at work sessions. (This seems like a good idea to me.)
Commissioner Gleason frets tunelessly about competing experts and how much he trusts staff. (This seemed a tad directionless and meaningless.)
Mayor Hughson starts responding to every comment with, “We could put that on the list for after November.”
In the end, there is a nice long list waiting for the new council, in November.
3. The last item was about Short Term Rentals and how noisy and unpleasant they are. (This did not come from Commissioner Scott.) Everyone agrees to a work session to revisit the short term rental policy. See, they do love a work session.
That’s all! It was a Texas Miracle!
The San Marxist 