Item 15: San Marcos puts $500K from the General Fund towards nonprofits. The Human Services Advisory Board recommends how it gets spent. Things did not go smoothly this year.
During Citizen Comment, representatives from the Hays County Women’s Shelter, Greater San Marcos Youth Partnership, and one other (I missed the name), all spoke up about the funding process. The procedure was new, they got less money than before, and the new process is problematic. In addition, each year, the money is getting spread more thinly across more and more organizations.
It sounds like the Advisory Board put a lot of effort into trying to rate each organization and be fair. They had a rubric, came up with average ratings and ranked the organizations. They decided that the top 15 would get funded at 55% and the rest at 20% as a baseline, and then they tweaked some individual organizations from there. But within each organization, this amount ended up seeming arbitrary and inconsistent. Some organizations got way less than they used to.
Here’s the thing: everyone is acting in good faith, and trying to get money to these nonprofits. (The process has morphed over the past 3-5 years, it sounds like.)
Jane Hughson handled it wisely. She basically said, “It’s been years since Council gave direction to the committee. This is our fault for not issuing clear instructions.”
She moved to postpone it to January, and then have Council figure out clear instructions, and re-do the allocations. Everyone agreed.
Way later, during Q&A, Jane added some other details: First off, San Marcos is a little unusual to put General Fund money towards nonprofits. Similar Texas cities just include this in with their CBDG money. So good on us, for taking care of each other in our community. Second, the original plan was that this fund was supposed to scale up as the city grew. It was supposed to be 2% of the budget eventually. But it hasn’t grown in a long time, and it’s probably time for it to do so.
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Item 17: Remove 660 acres from the Cotton Center and make it available for the SMART Terminal.
First, what on earth is the Cotton Center?! I guess it got approved in 2016.
It’s supposed to be this:
Ok, so it’s everything under the sun. Where is this gigantic thing with four schools and 8,000 housing units supposed to live?
I think it’s here:
That is my best guess.
This got approved back in 2016. This is how major things fly under the radar.
Okay, what is the SMART Terminal?
SMART Terminal was approved in 2019. It’s here:
Yellow is the SMART Terminal, nestled along the railroad tracks. The blue thing is the Cotton Center – that’s shape I tried to draw above. (The little pink trapezoid is Katerra. I think Katerra is a specific business that was going to be part of the SMART Terminal.)
What is the SMART Terminal, anyway? I read through the presentation and it’s very handwavey on what it actually is. Like a regular terminal, but smarter! (Clearly it has something to do with the proximity of railroad and airport, and smartness.)
Jane Hughson said that the SMART Terminal got dropped for awhile, and then sold to someone new, and so now it’s back.
So, which 660 acres do they want to take from the Cotton Center and add to the SMART Terminal? There’s no map anywhere I can find! There’s this vague map of the Cotton Center:
so my best guess is that they’re removing a perfect, circular red ring and leaving a bunch of disjointed chunks. I have no idea.
Is this a good idea? San Marcos River Foundation says hard no. Here is their issue:
The Cotton Center has a bunch of 100 year floodplain, and some dry creek beds running through it.
And here’s the corresponding water map of the SMART Terminal:
I believe that’s the San Marcos river at the bottom, running along the south side of Highway 80. So this is all draining into the river and potentially increasing flooding.
Council decided to send it to committee. Everyone acted like this was the beginning of the negotiation, and not the end of the negotiation, and that they’d be sure to talk about things like flooding, and impervious cover, and industrial run-off into the river. Hopefully that all comes true.
The San Marxist 