Citizen Comment:
A few people speak on renaming an alley as Boyhood Alley, in homage to the movie Boyhood, which was filmed in San Marcos.
However, the comment I want to focus in on is from a person from Rancho Vista/Redwood. She also spoke at P&Z last week, along with probably ~30 residents who wrote letters in. This deserves some extra attention. She raised two separate issues:
- The proposed industrial development immediately adjacent to Redwood
- The intractable health problems facing Redwood
As best I can tell, these only somewhat connected, insofar as Redwood gets generally neglected and ignored.
- The proposed industrial development immediately adjacent to Redwood
Last week at P&Z, probably 30 residents from Redwood wrote letters against a developer who’s trying to put an industrial development in the bottom half of this:
It was an astonishing turnout. (Quick note: City council doesn’t read letters outloud at meetings. P&Z does. This is annoying – the public should know who took the time to communicate.)
The Development Agreement had been approved last December, which put an industrial zoning right here:
But no one noticed. (I even blogged it, and didn’t notice.)
So why didn’t anyone turn out from Redwood, last December? Because Development Agreements don’t trigger notifications the way that zoning changes do. This is insane. The community in Redwood had no way of knowing that they were now downhill of a massive industrial complex, until just before the P&Z meeting.
(I went back and watched the December meeting again. There was barely any public discussion about it, although clearly a lot had happened in Double Secret Executive Session. Max Baker and Alyssa Garza voted against it.)
So the Development Agreement is already in effect. Two weeks ago, at P&Z, the developer came forth asking for two exemptions – a block perimeter exemption and a cut-and-fill exemption. Basically, this would allow them to build a gigantic thing instead of a normal-sized thing.
But like I said, there was a giant turnout by the Redwood/Rancho Vista residents, describing the current flooding and sewage problems, and how this would exacerbate them. P&Z voted both down. This is great!
Either the developer will appeal to council, or they’ll go back and reconfigure their plans. Either way, this needs to stay on the radar of San Marcos residents who live inside city limits, because we can hold council accountable more easily than Redwood residents can.
2. The Health Problems Facing Redwood
There was an article in The Guardian about the parasites endemic in Rancho Vista/Redwood:
Although it can be symptomless, Strongyloides is the deadliest of soil-transmitted parasites. If an infected person takes immune-suppressing drugs such as steroids or chemotherapeutics, or has a lowered immune system because of a disease like leukemia, the worm can rapidly multiply throughout the body and cause death.
In Rancho Vista, the 16 positive blood tests from a group of 97 residents is the highest percentage of positive blood samples found in a non-refugee population in the US, according to Singer, though the sample is relatively small. (A positive blood test can also occur in someone who was previously infected but no longer is.)
Apparently the problem is that we just should never have put septic tanks in this location – they leak and are impossible to maintain. However, the residents can’t really afford to deal with and fix the raw sewage.
There’s two things that need to happen:
1. funding needs to be acquired ( but from where? federal, state, local?), and
2. the neighborhood needs to tie in to San Marcos city sewage.
I don’t know exactly how this all will unfold, but this would be a good issue to ask about during the debates and the campaign season. It’s not okay for vulnerable community members to lack basic health and sanitation provisions.
The Riverbend Development should be structured with an eye to getting San Marcos city sewage access to Redwood. That’s not profitable, and so it won’t happen without some activism.
The San Marxist 