Citizen comment: equally split among a few topics:
– a smattering of anti-curfew advocates,
– representatives from nonprofits who are upset about the allocations this year.
We’ll get to both in due time.
Item 1: Free electric cabs downtown! The pilot program is underway. You can call them, or hail them just by waving your arm when you see one, or you can use the app.
They’re kinda cute!
The cabs have a fixed route, but they’re allowed to go off route to pick someone up or drop them off, and then they just return back to the route.
And since you asked:
Okay, I think the route is kind of weird.
– It doesn’t go through the actual town square.
– It’s all kind of peripheral
– There aren’t any designated park-and-ride parking lots, from what I can tell.
The more I stare at it, the more convinced I am that that can’t possibly be the route. That has to just be the boundary of the Main Street district. There’s nothing on the website that can plausibly be the route, though, either. I give up.
But I’m strongly in favor of free public transit, so hopefully this will stay and grow! I would most like to use it during July/August/September, when being outside feels like Satan’s butt.
The pilot program is supposed to stay under $500K, and last for another six months. Then hopefully it will become a permanent thing.
As long as this is turning into a full-fledged PSA, I may as well post the flyer:
Ok, I tested out that QR code above. It just goes to the same San Marcos website that I linked to above. There’s just a phone number to call the cab. No link to an app, no route, just a phone number. (The presentation definitely claimed there is an app.) Oh San Marcos: so many great ideas, so many terrible websites.
Nevertheless: test it out, why dontcha? Public transportation is a great thing!
…
Items 2,3, and 4: Several financial reports.
– the quarterly CBDG audit,
– the quarterly investment report, and
– the quarterly financial report.
On that last one, we’re making bank. This is the most striking graph:
In other words, we planned to spend light-blue-money, but we actually spent dark-blue-money. And we thought we’d bring in medium-blue-revenue, but we actually brought in green-revenue. Wowza. Across the board, we’ve come in under budget and over revenue, in almost every category.
On the one hand, this is good: we operated under prudent expectations and it worked out. On the other hand, we have a community with needs, and we should not sit on a windfall of money. (Nor should we return it via tax breaks.) We should spend it thoughtfully, on high quality programs.
…
Item 5: The Stupid Curfew, for the last stupid time. (Previous discussion, and the one before that.)
Mark Gleason moves to approve, and Jude Prather seconds it.
Alyssa Garza wants everyone to please explain why they’re acting against the boatload of emails, calls, and petition signatures they’ve received.
No one really answers.
Jude Prather wants the CJR committee to look at the severity of the crime. He makes several points:
– Government should protect civil liberty, but also safety.
– he had an awful experience as a teenager, when he was strip-searched at a mall, under accusation of shop-lifting. So he understands how negative police interactions can alter someone’s point of view.
– But this is not 1998 or 1999, which was a simpler time. This is a more dangerous time with greater public safety concerns. So he’s siding with the curfew.
Jude gave the same line at the last meeting, “This is not 1999, a simpler time,” which I ignored for being dumb and bland. But the second time he says it, we have to take it more seriously, because it’s mostly wrong:
And the murder/homicide rate:
So homicides did spike during Covid, but it’s absolutely in no way true that 1999 was significantly safer than, say, 2019.
Furthermore: on the murder spike, Chief Standridge specifically said that there have not been any murders in 2022 in San Marcos, for the first time in forever. So things are really not grim today!
(I’m guessing that Jude Prather graduated high school in 1999, and he imprinted on 1999 as a kind of The Most Generic Year yardstick for America.)
Back to Council discussion
Shane Scott brings up Max’s question from two meetings ago: How many encounters do young people have with police? In the last few months?
Chief Standridge answers, (at 1:42): “We don’t capture data associated with nonenforcement. And contrary to anything that’s been heard before, I never said that to do so would be “draconion”. I never used that word.” He basically says it’s complicated and expensive to get that data.
Why is Chief Standridge fixated on the word “draconian”? Shane didn’t use the word. No, it’s because Max Baker has been using it, during citizen comment, and attributing it to Chief Standridge. Max has been claiming that Chief Standridge said it would be draconian to record every instance of police interactions with community members.
So what did Chief Standridge actually say? Let’s go back to November 15th. At 1:22, Max says: “There’s presumably some other data set that says this is how many times we stopped and talked to people, with this as the reason, and is that data that you all keep? Your officers presumably should be tracking every time they stop somebody, to talk to them, right?”
Chief Standridge answers, “I would hope not! I hope we don’t ever live in a police state or a police city, where we document every time we speak to a person.”
I am pretty sure that’s the line that Max refers to. Max has substituted in the word “draconian” for “police state”. So Chief Standridge is right that he never used “draconian,” but what he actually said has roughly the same meaning.
Goddamnit, I’ve got to stop getting off-track on these dumb tangents.
Back to Council discussion:
Shane Scott, continuing in good faith: “When I was a kid, the PD made friends with me and I got a degree in CJ. Most kids are good kids, and it’s hard for me to do curfews based on my experiences.”
Shane Scott moves to postpone until after it goes to CJR. This is, of course, the same thing they voted on last week. But sounds good to me!
Saul agrees.
This is where Mark Gleason makes this quote that makes it into the San Marcos Record:
Please be kind to Mark. This is where he lives:
that is, on the set of Mad Max: Road Warrior.
Also, his relative is scared of 16-year-olds because he doesn’t know about drunk people yet. Don’t you dare tell him and ruin his innocence!
But more seriously: Mark is very worried about 15-year-olds with guns, but not at all worried about this:
It sort of makes curfews just seem quaint.
Back to Council Discussion
I’m getting bored of this whole discussion.
- Alyssa makes a case for tabling it: Tabling this will bring a sense of haste to the CJR. Otherwise it will join the endless, non-urgent queue.
- Jane says that over the years, she’s voted on this 4 times before with no issue. No need to postpone.
- Chief Standridge answers the racial data coding question from last time: SMCISD uses racial data as provided by parents.
- Saul asks Alyssa’s question from two meetings ago: What percent of violent crimes is coming from teenagers? Unfortunately, Chief Standridge explains that the answer involves queries into several databases, and will take a little bit of time. They’ll give it to the CJR committee when they have it.
The vote to postpone:
Fails yet again.
Final vote on the whole damn thing:
So that’s that.
It will go to Criminal Justice Reform committee, and they will do whatever they do. In the meantime, the curfew is in effect.
The San Marxist 