This week we talk about curfews and stray cats. It’s Max Baker’s last meeting, sadly. (My post-election thoughts can be found here.)
It’s a relatively short meeting. Jude Prather is absent, and Shane Scott goes home sick early on. So a lot of items get postponed until they’ve got a full house again.
Hours 0:00-2:45: In which I get fired up about curfews. They’re largely bullshit.
Hours 2:45-4:00: The cats and dogs ordinance is back up again.
See you next time, everybody. Stay warm.
Citizen Comment: Citizen Comment is mostly animal shelter experts who are politely asking us to undo the amendments that were added to the Animal Ordinance last meeting, and to trust that the experts have designed the policy to work best when you don’t throw sand in the gears.
One person also speaks up about the curfew ordinance, which ends up being the item of the night that I’m most fired up about.
Item 1: Sidewalk Maintenance and Gap Infill program
There is a quick update from the city – how do they pick which streets to install sidewalks on, what’s the process, how does it work for the landowners, etc. It seems very straightforward to me.
Your neighborhood can petition to get sidewalks added*. Max Baker asks if there is a petition process available to prevent sidewalks from being added to your neighborhood. There hadn’t been, but since all the councilmembers like the idea, there will be, now.
(I hate this idea. I want everyone to want sidewalks. They benefit people who may not live on your street! But that is not the Texas we live in, so I suppose anti-sidewalk petitions are good for the libertarians out there.)
* Although it’s not totally clear at that link where you find the petition. Maybe you have to email.
Item 17: Curfews. I actually feel really strongly about this issue!
Did you know that San Marcos has a curfew for underage residents? Neither did Chief Standridge. Apparently it’s been on the books in its current form since 2009, and it gets re-upped every three years.
There are two parts:
Chief Standridge first says that it’s not used very often, and it was impossible to use during Covid when everyone was at home during school hours anyway. So far this school year, they’ve only used it three times.
He specifically talks about “troubled neighborhoods”, neighborhoods with violent crime. Standridge likes curfews because it gives officers an opening to stop and talk to someone who looks too young to be out and about. Otherwise they’re not allowed to just detain people walking down the street, because that is a hallmark of a police state.
I’m so frustrated by the conversation that I want to start with a rant, instead of the council discussion. We’ll get back to the council discussion.
Are curfews best for kids?
Let’s say you’ve got a kid who is jeopardizing their future by missing too much school. Is it in their best interest to entangle them with cops and the legal system? NO. Just no.
Best case scenario, it costs them or their family $150 to go to court and straighten it out. Worst case scenario, they are now tangled up with the juvenile criminal justice system, and they are starting to accumulate prior offenses. This is particularly bad for kids who are likely to get racially profiled.
We lock up an astronomical number of people in the United States. We have a moral obligation to work to keep kids out of the criminal justice system.
And remember, we’re not cruising all neighborhoods on an equal basis, looking to talk to youths! We’re cruising troubled neighborhoods, and stopping young people there. The effect is biased along race and class lines, no matter how much Chief Standridge insists that there’s no racist intent. Maybe there is no racist intent! But in effect, there is bias. Only kids from troubled neighborhoods are getting ensnared under curfew laws.
What about those kids that really are getting up to mischief overnight or during school? Most of the time, you can let the family handle it. The police are not needed to help the kid straighten out.
But other times, kids causing problems are the ones that have big problems. They are in unstable homes. They have mental health issues. They are living with poverty and/or witnessing substance abuse and/or violence and/or manipulation and/or emotional control, etc. Getting these kids ensnared in the legal system just pours fuel on the fire.
What’s the alternative? What would be in the best interests of the kid? Basically, any meaningful, evidence-based intervention. Run it through community services, rather than the cops. Cops are really not trained to handle traumatized kids! Traumatized kids will deliberately try to provoke adults and be disrespectful, and cops are the worst at handling that kind of thing!
Why don’t we do implement more of those interventions that are shown to work? First of all, we do. Notice that there was no one from Community Action or the public schools or other after-school programs there to talk about what actually works against truancy.
If kids are still slipping through, why don’t we do even more of these programs? $$$$$$$$$. Anything that works will be labor-intensive and time-intensive. You have to have programs and you have to take time to build relationships with kids. You know what’s cheap? Letting officers stop kids whenever they want and intervene.
This is absolutely not best for kids. This is cheapest for kids.
Is it best for everyone else? Does it protect the rest of us to keep kids under curfew?
No.
When there is mischief or criminal activity, there are already mechanisms to intervene.
But more importantly, curfews don’t actually work. The academic studies show zero or minimal improvement when there are curfew laws in place. (What actually works? This chart summarizes the outcomes of a bunch of programs, both good programs that work, and also the dumb, authoritarian ones like Scared Straight that turn out to increase crime. This longer read is really thorough and good on programs that work.)
So how did City Council actually deal with this?
First, Shane Scott makes a motion to deny. Great! I agree.
Max Baker asks several times for data surrounding whether or not curfew is used to just stop teens randomly. What percent of stops do not result in tickets? Chief Standridge says that they don’t track that, and it would be overly cumbersome to do so.
Mark Gleason is a Chief Stan-stan, and so he’s all in. Anything that reduces truancy and violent crime (or pretends to) is good with him. His wife is an educator, and knows that truancy is a major problem. And violent crime in his neighborhood is out of control.
Alyssa asks, “How much of the violent crime is actually committed by minors?”
Chief Standridge doesn’t know this either. He openly says that the point of a curfew is to give officers cover so that they can stop minors and ask them why they’re out and about. I genuinely think he thinks it’s best for kids. (It’s not.)
Fundamentally, if you’re a hammer, you see the world as a nail. If you’re a chief of police, you think that police intervention is good for community members. (It’s not, necessarily.)
Jane Hughson asks about the list of exceptions. For example, you’re allowed to be out after curfew if you’re heading home from work or church. You’re allowed to be out and about on school holidays. Why don’t we call those “exceptions”? Instead we call them “defenses to prosecution”.
The reason is kind of creepy: If we called them exceptions, then officers would not be allowed to stop minors with exceptions. If we call them “defenses to prosecution”, then officers can stop whoever they like and give them a ticket, and the kids can use those exceptions in court to fight the ticket. It means that the cops don’t have to presume innocence. They can presume guilt, and let the kids fight it, in court.
The vote to deny the curfew ordinance:
Deny: Max, Alyssa, and Shane
Do not deny: Jane, Mark, Saul
Jude Prather is absent. It takes 4 votes to win a vote, so the motion to deny fails. So now there is a motion to approve the ordinance, which still needs to pass.
Max Baker asks how much the tickets cost. This is also a big consequence of over-policing poorer neighborhoods! You nickel and dime people to death!
Do you remember how much hand-wringing there was over a tax increase of $24 per year, which goes to help the entire community? The tickets here are set by the judge, with a max of $500. Plus court costs, which run $80-$100.
Max Baker makes a motion to cap the ticket fine at $50. This seems eminently reasonable to me. You’re still running up $150 in costs by being stopped by cops.
The vote:
Cap tickets at $50 max: Jane, Alyssa, Max, Shane, Saul
Fuck those poor people: Mark
Mark believes that punitive punishments are effective. That is a very authoritarian mindset. It drives me up the wall.
Next we go down a real rabbit hole with data. Max Baker wants the police to start recording a lot more data around these curfew stops.
I think asking for data is a waste of time, to be honest. The issue of curfews is a moral issue, and we already know, straight up, that curfews target people based on where they live. The only consequence of asking for data is to throw sand in the gears, because data is cumbersome to acquire. (Furthermore, Max’s question – are you stopping kids in a biased manner? – is not going to be answered by the data Max wants. You’d have to know which kids they just let walk by, without stopping them at all.)
Alyssa reiterates her question about wanting to know what percent of violent crime is caused by minors. This is the right question. And it’s not cumbersome at all to acquire. You’re not asking cops to fill out an extra form throughout their day, you’re asking someone to retrospectively pull a number from a spreadsheet.
Standridge balks at this. Minors records are protected by law!
Alyssa points out that she wants aggregate data, not individual data. (What Alyssa does best on the dais is respond to points like this in a soothing manner. She says, “Data is really powerful! I bet we can figure out a way to get the answer and still protect the kids!” in an upbeat, soothing way. It’s very effective.)
Max goes off on a rant about Mark Gleason being a shill for the police, because they endorsed him, and therefore he’s going to be in favor of this, no matter what!
Max is a little off here – Mark Gleason has a true authoritarian streak. Mark supports curfews because he sincerely loves heavy-handed police tactics, and believes in “good guys” and “bad guys”, and believes that the police can tell the difference. The police endorsed Mark, but Mark was always already in their corner.
Mark Gleason takes offense, and goes on a rant about the violent crime in his neighborhood. (He lives in Blanco Gardens.) He’s sick of it! He hears gunshots all the time, and kids are stealing car parts and messing up people’s yards.
Clearly Mark thinks that allowing cops to stop and talk to anyone looking young on the streets will have an effect on violent crime. That’s a very authoritarian take, and ends up hurting people who “look” like criminals.
The vote: Should cops have to collect and present a lot more data?
Yes: Max, Shane, Alyssa, Saul
No: Jane and Mark.
Finally, the main motion on curfews:
The vote: Should we have curfews?
Yes: Jane, Mark, Saul
No: Max, Shane, Alyssa
So this fails too!! What does this mean? It means that when they discuss curfews at the next meeting, it will still be the first reading. However, Max will be gone and Matthew Mendoza and Jude Prather will be back. So I’m guessing this will pass.
Item 19: Back to animals, shelters, and puppy mills. Last meeting was the first reading, and this is the second reading.
Recall when we left off last week, there were two big debates:
1. On Trap/Neuter/Release vs Stray-Holds
Here is what the animal experts proposed:
Healthy outdoor cats do not get picked up. Except that they can be picked up, and checked to see if they’ve been spayed/neutered. If they haven’t, they can be taken to the shelter, then spayed/neutered, and then returned to where they were picked up. This is Trap/Neuter/Release, or TNR.
Here is what Council is worried about: What if Fluffy the house cat escapes, and bolts and gets lost? And suppose Fluffy has no visible identification. She gets picked up, spayed, and returned to the neighborhood in which she was lost. The owner does not get a chance to find her at the shelter and reclaim her, and Fluffy stays lost.
The experts say that only 2% of shelter cats are reconnected with their owners, but councilmembers are still worried.
(I suspect that this is why mandatory micro-chipping is a vital part of the policy. But that got scrapped somewhere along the line. Without mandatory micro-chipping, there will definitely be borderline cases where it’s really hard to tell community cats from half-tamed outdoor cats from skittish indoor cats that got loose.
But mandatory micro-chipping has its problems, too: how do you publicize and facilitate it? how do you get everyone to go along with it?)
Alyssa asks if it’s possible to publicize cats that are being returned under TNR? That way I could check the website and see if Fluffy was returned to a specific location, and try to go find her there.
They say yes, they could do that.
Mark Gleason is also worried about cats being spayed/neutered against the owner’s will. He wants the cats held for 48 hours before the mandatory spay/neuter, and then held for another 24 hours to let them recover from surgery.
Here’s the moment of the night that made me laugh:
Saul says, “I’m going to throw a monkey wrench in the conversation. What if the cat has been exposed to rabies, and doesn’t show any signs of rabies?”
The animal guy answers, “Any animal that’s potentially been exposed to rabies has to go through a ten day quarantine.”
Saul says, “But you wouldn’t know that. Because they’re not showing any signs. What’s the procedure then?”
Yeah, ya wise guy! Whatsya procedure then?
The answer is, “In the case that we don’t know….then we don’t know. I hope that never happens.”
Saul says ominously, “It happened on Barbara Drive, years back. Just thought I’d throw a monkey wrench in the conversation.”
CHECKMATE, ANIMAL ENTHUSIASTS. Don’t even try to come before Saul without vetting your double-secret rabies exposure policy. His work is done.
So where does the conversation stand? Two amendments were passed last time that the experts are strongly opposed to. Everyone is worried about how loved pets will get caught up in the system. (And Mark is hyper-concerned about owners’ rights to have Quiverfull cats.)
Alyssa suggests that we revert back to the original language proposed by the professionals. She points out that the experts are devoted to animals, and are proposing policy that’s been refined over years, and we should not dispose of their expertise out of sheer hubris. That as long as the shelter is appropriately funded, they will work hard to reunite pets with families, and will act in the best interests of the animals. (This is my opinion as well.)
Mark gets fired up. He’s convinced that if we revert to the original, that they will start euthanizing cats left and right. It’s really astonishing how little Mark trusts certain people in certain situations.
The shelter people answer his euthanasia concerns: Right now, we euthanize cats immediately if there is a medical need to end suffering. The only other reason we euthanize cats is due to overcrowding. This policy lets us keep from having overcrowding. Mark, your stray-hold amendment will keep us in an over-crowding cycle.
Finally, Jane says “There’s only five of us here.” (Shane Scott has gone home sick at this point) “Can we send this back to committee, to hammer out language separating community cats from pets-cats?”
The vote to postpone until January:
Yes: Jane, Mark, Alyssa, Saul
No: Max
So it passes.
Onto Issue 2: The Sourcing of Puppies from Puppy Mills for Pet Stores
They voted to postpone before they ever got to the puppy mill part of the ordinance. So this got absolutely no discussion! It was very weird.
I was so confused. But keep reading! It gets one final gasp during Q&A at the end of the meeting.
…
Item 20: Remember the legislative lobby agenda from last time? It’s now up for a final vote.
Jane Hughson wants to strike one of the amendments that Max made last time, about whether or not we should lobby the state legislature to let us levy fees on Texas State.
Clearly some conversation has taken place behind the scenes. Both Chase Stapp and Fire Chief Stevens hop on and say that it’s futile and counterproductive, because other college towns have tried, and the State University lobby is ridiculously powerful. It would be better to go talk to the university directly and see if we can get them to partner with us in some new way. After all, there’s a new president.
The meeting is winding down, and Max is pissed. He calls everyone apathetic and makes some barb about for-profit universities that I don’t follow.
Alyssa tells him that she’s going to vote to remove the clause, but she offers to go to Erin Zwiener with him, and research the issue, and help draft a statement that they can give to the legislative committee. I don’t know if he accepted her offer.
The clause is removed (4-1 vote) and the main motion passes (5-0 vote).
…
Question and answer from the press and public: One community member asks “What happened to the Puppy Mill part of the animal ordinance? Is there any way you can deal with that part?”
YES! Thank you! it was bizarre that they tabled the entire motion, and did not say one word about the most controversial part!
The lawyer says they could do this. You’d have to have a motion to reconsider the item, and then you could start discussing the puppy mill part.
Alyssa makes the motion, saying she’d really like to close out this one part. ME TOO!
The vote to reconsider the item:
Deal with puppy mills now: Jane, Max, Alyssa
No: Mark and Saul
So that failed, because it requires four votes for anything to pass. I do not understand how Mark manages to be on the wrong side of every last single vote, but there you have it.
(What I want to know still is: can the puppy mill part be brought back sooner than January? Or does it languish for another two months? We are just left hanging!)
Full election results here. My thoughts:
1. The least surprising thing is that Saul Gonzales trounced Atom Von Arndt, 75% to 25%. Saul is well-known, and he knows how to turn out voters to the polls.
2. Or maybe the least surprising thing is that Yay On A passed overwhelmingly, with 82% in favor of decriminalizing possession of marijuana, up to 4 oz.
Note that city council is way out of step with San Martians on this. If it had been put to a city council vote, Jane Hughson, Mark Gleason, and Saul would have all wanted the amount reduced to 1-2 oz. I’m not sure 4 oz would pass at all, and 1-2 oz might have only narrowly passed.
3. Max Baker lost to Matthew Mendoza. Initially I was really shocked.
But now I understand it like so: I think the election was a referendum on Max Baker. There was most likely a huge whisper campaign against Max from a lot of people (and other councilmembers, I’m guessing). I agree with his politics, but he did lob a lot of unpleasant accusations at people and made a lot of people mad with his tactics.
Matthew Mendoza is from a well-connected family, and may have benefited from Saul’s network of voter mobilization efforts. I’m still disappointed that we’re losing Max up on the dais, though, and I hope he stays active in politics and activism.
4. Jane Hughson handily beat John Thomaides, 63%-37%.
I didn’t expect it to be so lopsided. I wish it had been a little closer, so that she’d feel some impetus to govern a little more proactively. This is a pretty clear mandate that voters want her to keep doing what she’s been doing.
5. Finally, the Hays County Commission turned blue! This is a big deal, because they’re the ones that make contracts with private prisons like this one for $17 million over the next three years, instead of working to reduce the number of people who are sent to prison in the first place.
Election day is Tuesday! Here are my bland, room-temperature recommendations and here is where you can go vote, if you haven’t done so yet.
….
Onto last Tuesday’s meeting, which was extremely packed and dense. There was a lot going on this night.
Hours 0:00 – 2:54: First, an introduction to Pick-a-Pet. Then a big issue: flood victims from 2015 need homes. Sunset Acres has insanely awful sewage and drainage problems. There is a head on collision between these two issues.
Hours 2:54 – 4:00: In which Max gets councilmembers to go on record with their position on every progressive issue you’ve ever considered.
Hours 4:00-5:08: We finally tackle the Pick-a-Pet problem. Are we willing to ban sourcing from puppy mills?
Hours 5:08-5:30: A light item! Finally! What kind of welcome sign says Welcome to San Marcos in the most welcoming manner?
That’s all we got! Make sure your derelict friends and family all show up at the ballot box on Tuesday!
Citizen comment: A ton of people turned out from Pick-a-Pet to fight the puppy mill ordinance. Mostly customers, with one or two employees. Their main talking points were:
These people seemed earnest, but the arguments above are all bunk. You can have really loving, sweet employees and still buy your puppies in bulk from Minnesota farms with 3000 puppies and atrocious conditions for the breeding dogs. None of these things are dispositive.
Also, under the proposal, you can still buy your favorite pure-bred dog from a small scale breeder, where you can tour the facilities and admire the happy, handsome parents of your new doggo. And this nice store with loving employees can pivot to selling pet supplies and offering pet adoptions, like PetSmart does.
Another talking point is:
This is also not really the point. The point is the puppy mills.
The speakers were pretty over-the-top with the mushiness. Their pups have transformed their families from bleak grayness to shimmers and sequins, and brought happiness to their little girls for the first time in their Dickensian existences. Only pure breeds from pet stores can bring little girls that kind of feels.
Stay tuned – we will hash out this ordinance thoroughly in Hours 4:00-5:08!
…
Item 16: About 40 acres near 5 mile dam:
It’s going to be apartment complexes. It had been zoned General Commercial, and now it’s CD-4, which can mean a lot of things. But they openly admitted that it’s going to be apartment complexes.
Should we apply our favorite criteria?
Housing stock: How long will it take to build? How much housing will it provide? What is the forecasted housing deficit at that point? Is it targeting a price-point that serves what San Marcos needs?
Environment: Is it on the aquifer? Is it in a flood zone? Will it create run-off into the river?Are we looking at sprawl? Is it uniformly single-family homes?
Social: Is it meaningfully mixed income? Is it near existing SMCISD schools and amenities?
The San Marxist Special: Is it a mixed-income blend of single family houses, four-plexes, and eight-plexes, all mixed together? With schools, shops, restaurants, and public community space sprinkled throughout?
So is this good or bad? It’s mixed. More affordable housing is good. General Commercial would have been good as well, except developers seem to be too timid to build the retail that people need to have near their homes.
…
Item 17: I listened to this when it came through P&Z on October 11th. This one is fascinating.
The 2015 floods destroyed a lot of homes. Three years later, 12 of those families were awarded CBDG grants to build new houses. Of those, 9 families are now in new homes. The CBDG program either built new homes for them on new lots somewhere in San Marcos, or they owned the land and had their old homes torn down and built new ones, raised above the flood plain.
We’re down to the last three families. They are still in the houses that were flooded, all trailer homes. The homes are becoming quite dangerous – a kid fell through the rotten floor, two of the couples are aging and there are damaged stairs, there’s mold, and on and on. A family of six has no heat in the winter. And so on. They are still trapped in a nightmare that’s been going on for seven years.
These three families don’t own their land, and it’s in the floodway, so they have to be moved to new lots. The city has a few lots available, but they’re not ideal – over by Texas State, away from schools/family/community, etc.
So along comes this lot, in Sunset Acres, down the street from Mendez Elementary, where an old firestation used to be. It’s large enough to be redeveloped into three houses. It seems ideal.
However! At the P&Z meeting, about a dozen members of the neighborhood showed up. They are dealing with horrendous conditions on their street. Basically, raw sewage is frequently backing up into their bathrooms and up through their drains. It sounds like a nightmare. And several of them have regular flooding, as well. This has been going on for years and years.
They weren’t opposed to the houses being built eventually, but they absolutely did not want anything increasing the quantity of waste in those pipes until the sewage problems were fixed.
The city staff explained the plan to fix the sewage: TxDot is putting a larger sewage pipe under I-35, which should be done by 2025. Then the city will start the Sunset Acres drainage and wastewater project in this neighborhood. It’s a two phase project. Fingers crossed, everything will be done by 2029!
P&Z members basically gawked at City Staff and said, “Why have you handed us this utter shit sandwich?!”
It seemed like such a disaster – these three families are so desperate, and these other people are desperate in different ways, and we’re supposed to put the first group in with the second?! No. P&Z denied the zoning change 6-2.
So now it goes to Council. I am pretty impressed by the city staff. They got smacked down hard at P&Z, and they got to work. First they had a bunch of meetings with the neighborhood and with all the different engineers and utility workers, and they sent little cameras down pipes and tried to figure out what to do.
They came up with a medium-term plan and a short-term plan to supplement the long-term plan.
Medium-term: they’re going to replace one of the worst sagging, splitting pipes running down Broadway.
Short-term: They’re going to massively enlarge a detention pond, to help with the flooding. For the sewer, they’re going to add an access point to the sewage line where it gets clogged, and they’re committing to cleaning it out on a regular basis. This should go a long way to keep the pipes flowing and prevent sewage from backing up into homes. (The new houses can be built with back-flow preventors, but the city can’t pay for those to be installed in existing private houses.)
Why haven’t we already been cleaning the pipes regularly? It depends what kind answer you want. Over the past decades and generations, we haven’t been doing these things due to negligence and systemic inequity. More recently, we haven’t been doing it due to a shoestring budget. We’re not doing tons of things throughout the city that we could, if we had more money.
Everyone on City Council was both impressed and appropriately cautious with this potential solution. Sunset Acres residents are so burnt out on being ignored by the city that they are not exactly celebrating yet. A lot hinges on how well the city implements the short and medium-term solutions.
Still, I don’t want to gloss over the tremendous amount of effort that the city staff went to, to make this a win-win-win situation. It would be great to remedy the raw sewage backflow and house these three families and restore everyone’s faith in the power of a group of citizens raising a fuss.
Item 18: 120 acres by trailer park on FM 110:
They want it to be light industrial.
Max: These light industrial things only get built next to marginalized groups. No.
Passes 5-1.
Next big topic of the night:
Item 15: I gather that City Council has a legislative committee comprised of Mayor Hughson, Alyssa Garza, and Mark Gleason. Max Baker wanted to be on it, but he is not. The legislative committee goes to the state capital in Austin and lobbies the state for different policy goals.
Max gave the committee a wishlist of issues that he wanted them to tackle, and they did not take his suggestions, so he’s bringing it to the entire council. (Plus a few extra.)
There’s a basic philosophic divide here:
– Jane Hughson says over and over that she’s not exactly against the ideas, but she thinks they are battles that aren’t worth fighting. That the opponents are too big and organized for measly little San Marcos.
– Max feels that the time for change is always now. If no one starts a movement, change will never begin.
Max has nine issues, and they take them one by one. (Boy do I love getting all these councilmembers down on record on these issues! Watch how spicy these get!)
Anytime something is “affordable”, we use the Austin-Round Rock Median Income as a yardstick for what “affordable” means. But the median San Marcos resident earns way less than the median Austin-Round Rock resident, so “affordable” to San Marcos needs to be adjusted downward from “affordable” for Austin-Roundrock.
For example, the median income for a family of 4 in Austin-Round Rock is $110K. The median income for a family of 4 in San Marcos is $42K. (The median for Austin alone is $75K). We need affordability to be measured specific to San Marcos.
The vote:
Everyone agrees with this! Add it to the list.
Some highlights from the Texas Observer article at that link:
“But Texas doesn’t have a system that allows price competition, like Oregon, where title insurance usually costs between $300 and $600. Nor does it have a socialized system, like in Iowa, where it’s even cheaper. Texas has the worst of both worlds: a state-mandated system that forbids competition and sets rates higher than anywhere else in the country, with all the profit flowing into private pockets.”
Free market, baby!
Jane Hughson agrees with the critique, but particularly feels like we’re tilting at windmills here. It doesn’t get any traction. Not on the list.
(I know I’ve got at least one reader who works at a title company! Hi! Sorry to take an aggressive stance against your industry!)
Apparently our local organization, the Homeless Coalition, does already work pretty closely with the Texas Housing Network.
Max Baker points out some specific legislative possibilities, like addressing how redlining, credit scores, and background checks get used to exclude people from renting available apartments. That part kind of gets ignored, though. They end up with just agreeing to pursue more funding for housing-related issues.
The vote: 6-1. So this will get added to the list.
Honestly, who could oppose lobbying for funding for people experiencing homelessness? Mark Gleason can! He doesn’t say why. (Shane Scott is absent, by the way.)
Max Baker notes that more and more states are loosening up their firearm regulations, and violent crime is on the rise, and wants some data on this possible correlation.
Mark Gleason gets very upset. Law-abiding citizens do not commit crimes!! That’s been proven!
Max Baker points out that anyone can get a gun, not just law-abiding citizens. That’s kinda the point of constitutional carry.
Mark is pretty emotional on this point and flailing. He is very fired up over the wild notion that an endless supply of lethal weapons could end up being used in lethal ways.
Anyway, this doesn’t go anywhere.
The vote:
Yes: Alyssa Garza and Max Baker
No: Jude Prather, Saul Gonzalez, Mark Gleason, and Jane Hughson.
Jane Hughson says that she cares about this issue, but she just thinks it’s useless to go after issues this big. Max calls her apathetic. It’s kinda rude, but she’s also a potential ally who is too timid to sign on to big issues.
Suppose you’re sitting in jail, and there’s police bodycam evidence that could exonerate you. Should you be able to see it? Should you be able to share it? In other states, you can. When the issue is raised here, Chief Standridge says he’s constrained by Texas Law.
The vote: Should we take lobby for citizen access to bodycam footage?
Yes: Alyssa Garza, Max Baker, Saul Gonzalez
No: Jude Prather, Mark Gleason and Jane Hughson, who once again points out that she would if it weren’t futile.
Tie votes count as denials. So this does not make the cut.
Should San Marcos lobby for Texas to repeal its anti-abortion law?
Alyssa points out that there are a lot of city councils throughout the state to coordinate and work with. We would not be taking this on alone.
The vote:
Yes: Alyssa Garza and Max Bakers
No: Mark Gleason, Saul Gonzalez, Jude Prather, and Mayor Hughson.
They offer mealy-mouthed dilutions, like “I’m pro-choice but can’t speak for the city!” (Mayor Hughson) and “It’s too complicated for 10 pm” (Mark Gleason) and “This is too divisive and complex” (Jude Prather).
After the vote, Jane says, “It’s too bad that the state legislatures won’t just go with what the majority of the people want,” and Alyssa mutters, “That doesn’t happen here, either,” and Max let out a guffaw. I smirked.
Vacant buildings are a nuisance and a waste of valuable space. They make downtown look sad and depressed. There’s no business inside that contributes to the tax roll. They attract vagrancy and can require extra fire and police services, compared to if they were occupied. Can San Marcos charge owners of vacant buildings a registration fee that kicks in every six months or so that it sits vacant?
Jude suggests that we should just levy such a fee, but Max says that he has only found out-of-state cities which do this, so he suspects it’s not legal here. Hence something to either pursue, or lobby the state about.
Everyone likes this idea.
Texas State used to pay into our stormwater fund, like the rest of us do. You may have noticed that they occupy a whole lot of pavement which sits uphill of a whole lot of town.
One day, the board of regents asked what this funny-looking stormwater fee was doing on their balance sheets, and then they got mad about it. So they went to the state legislature, who agreed that they shouldn’t have to pay it anymore.
(That’s how Jane Hughson explained it – I couldn’t find anything one way or the other in a quick google search.)
They also don’t pay for the fire department, police department, nor do they have to follow municipal regulations. (They do pay for wastewater services, and they do have their own police department, so there’s that.)
Mark Gleason and Saul Gonzales are on board with lobbying for them to pay for fire department service, but not stormwater. Neither of them offer up a reason why they’d exclude stormwater fees. I’m pretty sure they’re aware that there’s a flooding problem in town.
Mayor Hughson agrees to both, despite saying she thinks it’s unlikely to go anywhere.
Alyssa supports both.
Jude abstains.
So this one will make the cut.
I don’t really know what the SMART Terminal is, but it has something to do with the railroad line, north east of town. Max says it’s no longer what it was originally envisioned to be, and he wants it removed from the list of lobbying criteria.
Jane Hughson agrees that it’s no longer what it was going to be, but still wants it left on the list of items that we lobby over in Austin.
Who knows. SMART Terminal stays, by a vote of 5-1.
THAT’S ALL OF THEM!
It’s important to note that this is all preliminary. The real vote is next session. So any of this could get struck down, amended, or voted out.
Item 19: The Pick-a-Pet problem
This is a first reading, meaning nothing sticks until the final vote next time.
First we get a quick background on the shelter, and their efforts to move towards no-kill, or at least less-kill. Listen: it’s always a big problem when the presentation is not provided to the public. It leads to me squinting and trying to figure out what the hell is going on in a graph like this:
Wow! Over the past eight blurry marks on the x-axis, we’ve improved six blurry marks on the y-axis! What a nice upward trend that is. (Elsewhere they said that we’re currently at 92% live outcomes.)
So now we get to the proposed changes. Let’s take the main ones one at a time.
Gleason proposes changing this to the third time. Your pet gets out and gets picked up one time? Fine, but the next time, you’ll have to handle their spay/neutering.
The Vote:
Yes: Mark Gleason, Jane Hughson, Jude Prather, Max Baker, Saul Gonzalez
No: Alyssa Garza
2. Stray-holds for cats: how long should they hold your cat when they pick it up?
This conversation is incredibly confusing. I actually listened to this part twice, and then I went to the actual ordinance and I’m still confused.
First, this is only about cats. Cats do much worse at shelters – it stresses them out, and they’re susceptible to illness and disease. The old rule is that all cats get held for 5 days. After that, your cat can get adopted out or euthanized.
Based on the presentation: the new proposal is to break out different cases:
– Kittens under 3 months old are basically always from feral litters. Kittens don’t escape from homes when they’re that little. So the first proposal is no stray-hold for little baby kittens. They can just be adopted out. (Everyone is fine with this.)
– The next category is cats with traceable identification. Is there a tag, or a microchip? Can we get in touch with the owner? If so, we’ll hold the cat for five days, or three days after reaching out to the owner.
It sounded like this category includes any cat that appears to have an owner – does it have out-dated microchip? Has it been spayed or neutered? But I couldn’t tell for sure.
– The third category is cats without traceable identification, who are healthy. These cats would get spayed and neutered and returned to wherever they got picked up. That way, a healthy outdoor cat does not languish in a shelter. This is Trap/Neuter/Return, or TNR. (Here’s a link I found explaining TNR more thoroughly. It sounds good.)
This third category is the contentious category. Should we hang on to cats without identification for five days?
Based on what’s in the ordinance:
– That third category, cats without traceable identification, are called Community Cats. Feral cat colonies are fine. You’re allowed to feed and love your colony of community cats. Hopefully they’re gradually picked up and spayed and neutered, and any that are injured or sick need to be tended to, and kittens should be removed for adoption.
It does not talk about TNR at all. The presentation did a little, but I don’t see it in the ordinance. What the ordinance says is that visually healthy cats should not get picked up in the first place.
So what happens if your cat gets picked up, despite that? The presentation certainly made it sound like it could happen!
According to the section on Impoundment, cats with no traceable identification will not be held for 5 days. So what happens to them? It doesn’t say! It does not say that we’re implementing TNR and will return them.
What happens to the other cats, the ones with ID? If you don’t pick up your cat, there’s a few options:
– it gets put up for adoption,
– transferred to a different rescue organization,
– fostered out
– euthanized
Nowhere does it say that your cat may be returned to where they found it.
Furthermore, here’s another problem: what happens when the line between community cats and pets gets blurry? Is your cat getting returned to where they found it, or adopted out/euthanized?
Mark and Alyssa are very concerned with a situation where someone is trying to slowly tame a stray cat, and has been putting food out for them, and befriending them, but hasn’t yet been able to catch the cat and take it to the vet for a check-up. If that cat gets picked up by the shelter, what happens?
Mark wants a 5 day hold for this pet, and it sounds like he believes that otherwise the cat will be immediately put up for adoption or euthanized. He never refers to TNR or returning the cat.
Alyssa also wants a 5 day hold. She did acknowledge that the speaker said the cats would be returned, but she was still troubled by this. So she is not on board with TNR. (I’m not sure why. Why would it be better for the cat to sit in a shelter for five days, over being returned to their familiar habitat?)
Here is my opinion: TNR is good, but the ordinance is very poorly written on this point. It should say explicitly which cats will get returned to where they’re picked up, which cats will be held for five days, and what happens to those cats at the end of the five days. TNR should be clearly stated in the Community Cat section, Impounded animals, and Disposition of animals. Right now, it’s written as though it will always be perfectly clear which cats are community cats and which cats are pets, and that bright line does not exist.
3. Finally we get to the big item: pet stores shall not sell cats and dogs unless they come from a shelter. San Antonio has this ordinance, New Braunfels just passed this. It’s a thing that’s going around.
The idea is that the USDA is supposed to visit breeders, and check for humane violations, but they’re massively underfunded and show up maybe once every few years. Under the ordinance, you would still be able to buy a pure bred dog, but you have to buy directly from the breeder. Apparently the American Kennel Club explicitly says that members shouldn’t sell their dogs to pet stores.
I cannot tell you how horrified Gleason is by this. He starts at 4:31.
He’s open to compromise: he wants a rule that pet stores can’t buy from any puppy mill with any infraction from the USDA. Jude Prather is also on board with this.
It’s pretty easy to pick apart Gleason’s arguments, and mostly this occurred.
This was the most entertaining moment to me: Remember how the USDA may only get around to inspecting a puppy mill once every five years?
In response, Mark says, “If we don’t know anything about them, then they could be GOOD! We don’t know! Maybe they’re GOOD!”
Yes. Maybe they’re full of warm snuggles and blankies and rawhide bones. Those mean old activists just hate the snuggly love of a good puppy. You figured it out, Mark.
I don’t want to come down too hard on Mark. I think he was very emotional, and channeling his emotions through nonsensical arguments. I think in his heart of hearts, he believes:
He’s wrong, though, and he cannot take in information to the contrary.
The vote: Do you want to stop pet stores sourcing puppies from puppy mills?
Yes: Alyssa Garza, Max Baker, Jane Hughson, Saul Gonzalez
No: Mark Gleason, Jude Prather.
There’s one last vote: delaying this part of the ordinance for a year, so that Pick-a-Pet has a chance to convert its business model. That passes 6-0.
Again, all this has to be finalized at the next meeting. First readings are not the final story.
Finally! A lighthearted item!
Item 22: You know how Kyle, Buda, and New Braunfels have these groovy signs introducing themselves to you?
We want one too! And we have some TxDot money that’s begging to be used (on I-35).
City staff want feedback on some preliminary plans, so they offer up these ideas to council as a launching off point:
Here’s what council has to say:
First is Jude: They’re all nice! I don’t know if I could pick just one. They all look sort of similar. But YES!
Then Mark goes: Well, I can certainly pick! I love E. That one is the best. The depth, the motion…yes.
Next is Max: I kinda think the whole concept is dumb. My phone tells me when I get to a city.
(I tell you, writing this blog is so much fun.)
Then Alyssa speaks: They’re all hideous. It looks like a retirement village.
And then Saul: Could we get a mermaid on it? Or a rattler? Or a bobcat?
(Yes! How about a mermaid wearing a rattler, while riding a bobcat?)
Finally Jane: They’re all terrible. Those don’t look like river rocks. River rocks are smooth. Why would the river be floating up in the air like that?! The words “San Marcos” should be horizontal.
Everyone likes “established 1851”. Max points out that we could go way back, and use that we’re the oldest continuously inhabited place in North America.
They decide that staff will bring back something so innocuous and bland that when the city re-brands itself, it won’t clash with this milquetoast excuse for a sign.
So what’s the official Marxist take on city welcome signs?
We could do a whole lot worse! Bring it back!!
The San Marxist 