Items 20-21: The ’22-’23 yearly budget.
Last time, we did a deep dive. Here is the executive summary:
Option A: Drop the property tax rate to 59.3¢ from 60.3¢. On average, each household saves $24 for the year. Budget is $700,000 less.
Option B: Keep the property tax rate at 60.3¢. Use the extra $700,000 to pay for six new public safety employees, split up as four fire-fighters and two police officers.
Mayor Hughson, Jude Prather, Shane Scott, and Mark Gleason are all Option B. They all cheer for public safety.
Max Baker, Alyssa Garza, and Saul Gonzalez are all Option A.
Max and Alyssa both represent constituents who are highly skeptical of cops. (hi!) Their basic argument is that more cops does not automatically mean more public safety.
Saul’s reason is different: he is unwilling to put the $24 increase on struggling home owners. He shares that his mother worked at Texas State as a maid when he was growing up, and she’d have to go to financing companies to cover her taxes. His sympathy lies with the most struggling home owners.
The Vote: Should we adopt the budget with the extra $700K?
Yes: Mayor Hughson, Jude Prather, Shane Scott, and Mark Gleason
No: Max Baker, Alyssa Garza, and Saul Gonzalez
That was so fast! So we’re done? Ha, no. We’re never done. But this time, we’re really not done.
Here’s the problem: the tax rate is a separate vote from the budget. Aaaaaaaannnnd…by Texas state law, the tax rate must pass with a 60% majority. Council needs 5 votes now, to establish the 60.3¢ tax rate. And of course, there were only four “yes” votes above.
Either Max, Alyssa, or Saul has to flip to “yes”, or Council has to go back and undo the budget they just approved.
So now we dig into the deeper arguments, from SMPD Chief Standridge and Fire Chief Stephens.
Chief Standridge’s argument is basically this:
- There are a lot of public safety things we can do without more cops, and we’re doing them. (I went over this last time, here.)
- You need cops for in-progress, violent 911 calls. There is no public safety alternative. You just need cops for that. We don’t have enough. I need officers specifically to respond to violent-in-progress-911 calls.
Max and Alyssa both concede the first point. They both praise his efforts to be an ally to progressives. He’s worked hard to form this allegiance, and they are right to recognize it.
For this one, narrow context (responding to in-progress-violent-911-calls), I do want SMPD to hire extra cops. I want faster response times to these calls. Standridge says they’re around 8.5 minutes long, and it should be 5 minutes.
Max and Alyssa’s other points are much weaker:
- Max argues that it’s hypocritical that cops were so indifferent to safety when it came to wearing masks during covid, but now they need more cops. This is just irrelevant. Yes, cops should have worn masks, and yes, cops died unnecessarily of covid. Either way. right now, we need cops to answer 911 calls.
- Alyssa argues that it’s irresponsible to pay for more personnel when we’re doing such a miserable job reaching out to our most vulnerable citizens for feedback and conversations. This is also true, but you can apply it to absolutely any proposal. Government would grind to a halt if we held it to that standard. Public outreach to the most vulnerable citizens is incredibly important, but also incredibly hard.
Chief Standridge says that San Marcos is more dangerous than Georgetown, Kyle, New Braunfels. There’s something called the Violent Crime Index, which is the number of violent crimes per 10K residents. Here’s how we stack up:
Georgetown: 12.4
Kyle: 17.4
New Braunfels: 24.5
San Marcos: 53.5
Statewide: 44.4
Max and Alyssa both question the methodology of that index. But I don’t think their criticisms hold water. I can believe that this statistic is shoddy or inflated, but whatever problems it has, it’s going to affect all those cities, not just San Marcos. It wouldn’t make San Marcos look specifically worse in comparison.
Fundamentally, Max and Alyssa are never going to vote for more cops, because they see it as betraying their constituents. That is fine!
But we still have to pass a budget, and Saul isn’t budging, either.
Next up: Fire Chief Les Stephens.
Fire Chief Les Stephens sounds like he’s about to quit. In a nutshell, “I really resent having to grovel in front of you all. You make me grovel every year. We’ve been underfunded since I took over 13 years ago. I used to think the old chief wasn’t good at his job, but now I realize you put him in that position. I will not be groveling here next year.”
Which brings us to the most absurd moment of the evening, at 1:39:00. Saul Gonzalez attacks Chief Stephens on the flimsiest of pretexts, and then Saul just doubles down and digs in his heels. It just keeps going. It’s so bizarre and inappropriate.
Saul asks Chief Stephens about a $45K charge for landscaping, a few years back. Chief Stephens answers that they do their own landscaping, and that the contract is soil and mowing, and the costs are on par with the rest of the city buildings.
Saul says – and this is a quote – “I just want to know what you value. What’s more important? More fire personnel, or keep your grass looking really nice?” Chief Stephens is like, “Facility maintenance is a council priority. You all literally make me.” Saul cuts him off, saying, “Well, I don’t want to pay $45K for that.”
But Saul is not done! Next, Saul asks if they get fancy firetrucks with bells and whistles, and Stephens is like, “No. Mid-range. Like you all told me to get.”
Jane admonishes Saul for not asking those questions back at the time, and Saul says he did. (If Saul did, it was super out of character for him.)
It’s very weird to see Saul being such a jerk!
Actually, that’s not quite right. Saul seems is acting like someone who is running for re-election, and hasn’t said a word in three years, and is now trying to say a whole lot of words. Way too many words.
Detour over!
So here we are: Either Max, Alyssa, or Saul has to flip to “yes”, or we go back to the old budget.
It’s time to vote. Drum roll …Saul reiterates that he’s looking at the budget hard, but that he’ll change his vote, and support the 60.3¢ rate. “But I’m going to keep an eye on you guys!” he says ominously.
The Vote:
Yes: Mayor Hughson, Jude Prather, Mark Gleason, Shane Scott, and Saul Gonzalez
No: Alyssa Garza and Max Baker
The budget has passed.
For the rest of the night, LMC relentlessly teased Saul about that line – “I’m going to keep an eye on you guys!” – every chance she got. And I enjoyed it every time.
One final note, for the wonkiest of municipal nerds
Before the first vote, Max Baker asked why he hasn’t heard about his question on the appraisal lawsuits over MLS data. Max has brought this up many times. Based on this, I assumed that the appraisal district was being sued for artificially inflating home prices. I assumed that the appraisers aren’t allowed to use MLS data to appraise houses, because it would be unfair to home owners, and now they were being sued for it.
Jane Hughson replies that she did get a response from the appraisal people, and she reads it on the spot. It says, more or less, “It was legal for us to use the methods that we used.”
Max gets frustrated that she hadn’t asked them the specific question he wanted to know: “Are they being sued for using MLS data?”
Jane Hughson just goes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
The thing is, the letter does answer Max’s question. The answer is, “Maybe we’re being sued, maybe not, but we’re on firm legal ground.”
So finally I went and looked up the lawsuit. It’s not about appraisals being too high. It’s about MLS being private data. The MLS people are suing because they don’t want the appraisal district to use their data.
There’s just no smoking gun here, and not one that benefits the community in any way that I can discern.
The San Marxist 