Item 22 Next up: a little light industrial area by the airport:
169 acres, to be exact. They want to zone it to be Light Industrial.
Reminds me of the new park land we bought a few weeks ago:
Eh, I guess it’s not that close. There’s a lot of space out there.
(Also, did you notice that google maps has renamed I-35 “Monarch Highway”? That’s so cute! much better than “Smushed Monarch Highway”.)
Shane Scott asks about flight paths, and the developer concedes that the property is right in the line of Runway 3. But also says that the FAA and the airport both gave this development a thumbs up. I have no idea about such things.
The vote:
Yes: Mayor Hughson, Saul Gonzalez, Jude Prather, Alyssa Garza, Mark Gleason
No: Shane Scott, Max Baker
So it will come to pass.
…..
Item 23: Alternative Compliance for Cut-and-Fill
Cut-and-fill means that you are trying to build on a rocky, uneven slope. But your building needs a flat foundation. So you decide, “What is the average elevation of this portion?”
Once you know your average elevation, you have some bumpy parts that stick up, and some sunken parts that are too low. So you shave down your bumpy parts and fill in your sunken parts. Ta-da, cut and fill!
The problem is that if you’re on a hillside, you may have to cut out a lot of dirt and move a lot of dirt, and this is going to affect how water runs down the hill. What’s worse is if you’re on a hill in a flood zone. You may have heard, but San Marcos has a flooding problem.
So these folks are trying to develop here, in that blue region:
on the corner of Rattler Road and East McCarty.
They’re allowed to cut-and-fill up to 8 feet, but they want to cut and fill up to 13 feet. And it’s in a flood zone.
But the real reason that I’m interested in this case is because I’m invested in this case, where the water will run downhill to Redwood – also a cut-and-fill ordinance that is coming up soon. I was intently watching this case, to read the tea leaves on the next one.
Max Baker suggests that the developer could offer up some environmentally friendly perks to take the sting out of this flood risk? The developer responds that he’s under the gun to get this approved tonight, and he’d love to try.
So the motion gets tabled for a few hours. The developer goes off with the engineer. They come back with a compromise:
- They’ll put a 20,000 gallon rain barrel on each 150,000 square foot building, and use it towards irrigation.
- They’ll reduce impervious cover from 80% to 60%
- They’ll do some water quality treatment thing that I didn’t follow.
It gets approved unanimously now.
These are good, environmentally, but as a harbinger for the Redwood case, I didn’t like it. For the Redwood case, I want them to deny it altogether.
….
Item 15: Art purchases
The Arts commission is purchasing four sculptures for our San Marcos sculpture garden. I didn’t realize we had a sculpture garden!
Then I looked it up, and realized I did realize it after all!
It’s in between the library and the Activity Center, on Hopkins. (Photo yoinked from the city page.)
Anyway, here are the sculptures we’re buying:
Very nice! They’re not local artists, unfortunately. Sometimes we commission art, sometimes we purchase existing art on the cheap. Or so I’m told.
The San Marxist 
It’s funny that a cut and fill alternative compliance ordinance is coming up. It was the Sessoms Creek or North Campus Housing project that tried to approve a 30′ cut and fill into Sessoms Creek and use a yes-man engineering firm to justify the engineering. Darren Casey, Ed Theriot consultant, and real estate agent & current Planning & Zoming commissioner Carter Morris of Century 21 colluded to get the project passed. The SM River Foundation hired their own environmental engineer to audit the applicant’s engineering. A side note here, there was also a traffic study done for Sessoms Rd that was conducted on a rainy weekend and on a holiday for avg traffic usage by the applicant. The City does not audit the presented engineering or have money to audit, so it goes unchecked. The City just doesn’t have the staff. Back to making cut and fill annitem for alternative compliance for out cut & fill ordinance, it means that the decision will now go to whatever planning and development staff decides is good or good enough an administrative or in-house decision.
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Correction: the cut & fill plan for Sessoms was 15 foot.
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Forrest, this is super helpful backstory for me. I know Theriot’s name comes up constantly but I don’t know what projects in the past are exactly his doing. I definitely remember the controversy with Sessom Creek apartments, but I don’t know when it was. 2013? 2014? Do you know off the top of your head, by any chance?
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