Some of the citizen comments:
– In favor of a committee for animal services. (Which is on the agenda tonight. Spoiler: it passes.)
– Problems with SMPD: Namely, Chief Stapp’s complicity in the negligence during the Biden Bus emergency calls, and how we continue to employ him. We need SMPD oversight by external community members, instead of recycling the same individuals to guard the henhouse, so to speak.
Public Hearings:
1. There’s going to be a gas station at the corner of 123 and Clovis Barker. Eventually. This is just before you get to the McCarty overpass, heading south.
2. Renewing some low income tax credits for a housing complex (Champion’s Crossing), right at the entrance to Blanco Vista, at Yarrington Road. It’s been there for a long time, 156 apartments.
Max Baker points out that the income percentiles are based on Austin median income, not San Marcos median income. According to this, Austin median income for a family of 4 is $99K. And hooboy, those are not San Marcos numbers at all. Having apartments priced to be affordable at 40% of the median Austin income is just a regular San Marcos market rate, and yet the city is subsidizing this.
It passes unanimously. Baker basically holds his nose and votes to grandfather it in, but points out that new projects need to clear a higher bar.
3. Transportation Master Plan
Mostly they hashed these details out at the last meeting; see here. Mayor Hughson raised one last issue for discussion: reduction of driving lanes on Sessom and Craddock.
Shane Scott and Mark Gleason come out against this. Scott is pro-speed bumps in order to calm traffic, although the engineer says that Craddock and Sessom are busier thoroughfares than what you’d normally stick a speedbump on. Gleason points out that there already is a crushed granite path on Craddock, from Bishop to Old RR 12.
(Does it really extend all the way to Bishop? In my memory, the crushed granite path starts out strong on the Old 12, and then dribbles to extinction somewhere along the way. Google maps agrees with me! I win. The existing path appears to end at Ramona street, and then turn into a sidewalk till Archie, and then it peters out.)
Gleason also makes an impassioned plea to future growth. Won’t the ghost residents of tomorrow resent our bike lanes? Max Baker points out that they might also prefer the bike lanes.
Mayor Hughson asks the engineer, Richard Reynosa, some of the key questions: how much does it cost to put the bike lanes in? how reversible is the decision? what are the traffic studies showing?
Reynosa says: It’s just the cost of striping. It can easily be un-striped. The traffic studies show that these streets can handle being reduced to one lane. He points out that Sessom already has been reduced to one lane for the past year, due to construction, and will continue to be reduced for the next year.
Gleason makes another semi-nonsensical plea – what will we do in the case of natural disasters? If there is a tornado or a fire, aren’t we courting danger by reducing these roads to one lane? (Nobody responded with the obvious response: Bro, we’re just re-striping the lanes. Cars can drive over stripes, especially to flee a forest fire.) Whenever Gleason stops making sense, I start to wonder who is whispering in his ear.
Gleason makes a motion to keep Sessom and Craddock as they are.
Max Baker makes the appropriate arguments in favor: bike lanes can actually reduce the number of cars on the road. Traffic congestion is often due to speeding, and not the sheer quantity of cars on the road. Craddock in particular is like a 1950’s drag-racing avenue, just yearning to be sped down, with its wide unfettered lanes. It needs to be calmed.
Jane Hughson is persuaded mostly because this is such a cheap, easily reversible investment. Why not try it out and see how it does?
In the end, Gleason’s amendment fails:
Yes: Gleason, Scott, Gonzalez
No: Garza, Baker, Prather, Hughson
The vote on the entire transportation plan passes.
Yes: Everyone besides Shane Scott and Saul Gonzalez.
No: Those two.
Honestly, Saul Gonzalez plays his cards so close to the vest that it’s impossible to know what his game is. What didn’t he like? I have no idea!