Month: December 2021

Hour 1, 12/15/21

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Let’s discuss the Transportation Master Plan. The main issue here is bikes, and whether their lanes should be protected, shared, buffered, or sharrows. Here’s a nice graphic from here:

If I were to name them, I’d call them Safe, Scary, Pleasant, and Terrifying.

There was significant discussion on whether or not sharrows are terrifying. On the one side, it appears that many studies focus on the perceived safety of sharrows and not the actual safety of sharrows. It took me about two seconds of googling to find a study that clarified this point, though. So I’m calling shenanigans on the sharrows-advocates here.

Another point of contention: Barnes Drive and Monterrey Oaks. Both have the potential to be great biking places. Barnes Drive runs parallel to I-35 and can get bikers to their jobs at the outlet mall. Monterrey Oaks connects the neighborhood to Bouie elementary and the high school. The planning department pled that neither spot can handle a bike lane, and thus both of them have to be sharrows. The city council was pretty united in their polite skepticism.

Here’s my not-so-polite skepticism: wtf, planners? Neither of those roads are high speed thoroughfares, and both are plenty wide. The planners seemed tragically dedicated to the sanctity of turn lanes. It did not seem to occur to them that Bouie elementary might want a bike lane, and might even turn over some easement without a fight to make it happen. And Barnes Drive? The road that separates giant parking lots that are never full? This seems like the least difficult needle to thread. I’M ROLLING MY EYES.

City Council was great. Max Baker was the most outspoken proponent, but Shane Scott and Mayor Hughson also advocated forcefully for traffic calming measures and general bike safety improvements. Baker amended the plan to include both Barnes and Monterrey Oaks, and the city staff acknowledged that it wasn’t impossible. It would just take time and money. The amendments passed unanimously.

Anyway, this is not the final vote. This all comes up one more time. There was reasonably good turnout among the cycling community – maybe four or five speakers? Hopefully they keep mobilizing and advocating for Less Terrifying options.

December 7th City Council Meeting

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

Hour 1

In which we have a whole lot of citizen comments on the subject of the animal shelter, and on Item 28

And in which the consent agenda is passed

And in which several gas stations are approved.

Hour 2

In which the developer emphasizes that Tiny Houses are not the same thing as Micro Houses, and everyone promptly forgets, because semantics are dumb.

Hour 3

Development agreements, annexation, that kind of thing.

Thoroughfare master plan. Some discussion of sharrows, a thing where you paint the main lane to indicate that bikes are sharing the lane, which ends up increasing the fatality rate. Max Baker advocates for the biking community. Not up for a vote until the next meeting.

(No separate post for this hour.)

Hour 4

In which we discuss puppies, Jews, and fences, but not all in the same item.

Hour 4, 12/7/21

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 2: Shane Scott had pulled Item 2 from the consent agenda, on an interlocal agreement between the university and city on Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan.

Now, I clearly missed some workshop and they did not explain what was going on, so I’m using my context clues here. First Scott proposed postponing the agenda item until December, 2022. How is this not a jerk move? If it walks, talks, and quacks like a jerk move, then I mean…

Anyhow, nobody seconded his motion, and so he changed it to February 2022. At this point they had a meaningful conversation about some fence somewhere and some details, and it sounded like other councilmembers also had questions. So the postponement passed 5-1, with only Baker dissenting.

Item 24: A resolution against anti-semitism and hate crimes.

There really has been a disturbing amount of anti-semitism in these parts lately, as well as the chronic background static of anti-Black and anti-Hispanic racism, in different ways. This resolution is… nice? There’s nothing wrong with it? The councilmembers sort of had the giggles with how enthusiastically they were supporting this measure, which did not help it seem very substantial.

Item 28: Banning the sale of cats and dogs at pet stores.

This item was a discussion item, not a voting item. It sounds like the most promising outcome is to require that private venues source their cats and dogs from animal rescue shelters and humane societies.

Gleason was worried about the mom and pop breeders. That kind of drives me crazy – I suspect mom and pop breeders are quite capable of keeping animals in sadistic living standards. Not universally, but it’s not a group that I want to give a wholesale pass to, either.

Hour 2, 12/7/21

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

The bulk of this hour was spent on this little development, way out on Post Road. It looks like it’s roughly halfway to Five Mile Dam. The plan is for this to be a bunch of Tiny Homes and Tiny Duplexes, mostly for rent but maybe for sale. (The developer feels strongly that you not call these Tiny Houses, because he has some arcane specifications attached to that word. These are Micro Houses!)

Everyone was mostly fine with the plan. It’s way out of town. It would be better if it were easily accessible.

The proposal had no more than two unrelated people allowed in a rental unit. I hate this particular provision, and it’s all over the place in San Marcos. Ostensibly it’s about preventing an overflow of cars, or an overflow of students, and neither of those explanations hold up under scrutiny terribly well. All it does is:

  1. Enforce an outdated paradigm of who gets to live together, according to Society
  2. Make it more expensive to live and increase sprawl, if you were to actually abide by it
  3. But in fact, obviously no one worries too much about it. Which means it is only enforced arbitrarily, when someone has an axe to grind. It is a weapon to wield capriciously when there is an ulterior motive.

It only affects lower classes, and just perpetuates the stigma of living in cost-saving ways. It’s the worst.

Baker and Garza took issue with this, and made all the right points. Gleason made a nonsensical argument in favor of it: with houses so tiny, we need this rule to prevent too many people from cramming in! I will leave the disposal of this dumb point as an exercise for the reader.

The occupancy restriction was voted down, 7-1, and the development was approved.

One note: Why can’t something like this be mixed income? Why does it have to be uniformly for lower income community members, and then other developments are uniformly for UMC residents? I hate that. Developments should have housing options that span from the poor to the wealthy. Even when it occurs in San Marcos, like at La Cima, it’s done poorly, with a large apartment complex tacked on to the front end. Why not have duplexes and fourplexes and eightplexes scattered throughout?

Hour 1, 12/7/21

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

There were quite a few speakers on the topic of pets and the humane society. They were concerned about two things:

  • the alarming deterioration of the humane society while nothing seems to progress on finding a new director. It’s been open since October 2020. Employees are quitting and it sounds like the wheels are coming off the whole operation.

    I truly don’t know what the hold up is. A lack of applicants? Paying too little? Lack of urgency?
  • Item 28, banning the sale of out of town cats and dogs at local pet stores. Apparently this is a widespread ordinance in towns – mandate that pet stores must sell animals from the local population, rather than import animals from puppy mills and the like. Sounds like a win-win to me.

    We shall see how Hour 4 goes, however, when we get there!

Also in the first hour, we annexed land and approved two gas stations. One down 123, at Clovis Barker, towards the high school. The other on I-35, at Trace Development. Done & done.