Hello everybody! Who’s ready to see what happened this week in your local city council?
Hours 0:00-1:13: SMART Terminal has no A or R anymore? And some strategic goals for next year’s budget.
Hours 1:13-2:22: McCoy’s, murals, and we talk about vacancy taxes a bit.
I’m getting more and more ticked off by the SMART Terminal developer. (And he wasn’t even really on the agenda this meeting.) I don’t know what’s going to happen there.
Citizen Comment: Mostly of the speakers are people angry about the SMART Terminal.
A big fight is (hopefully) brewing. However, the development agreement was already discussed (in a pretty pathetic discussion) in January, and then approved back in February.
This is the same problem that happened with the La Cinema studio over the aquifer last year: by the time the public hears about something and has time to organize and respond, the development agreement has already sailed through Council.
With the SMART Terminal, the developer does still need more approvals. The new land isn’t yet zoned Heavy Industrial. So there are still intervention points. But the foundation has been set, and it’s very frustrating how quickly the basic agreement gets sealed.
In February, the SMART Terminal went to P&Z to be zoned Heavy Industrial. Because so many community members showed up and spoke at that meeting, P&Z delayed the vote a month, to give the developer time to meet with neighbors and gain their buy-in.
The speakers this week described how the meetings are going. It sounds like the developers are being giant pricks about meeting with neighbors, let alone gaining their buy-in.
When they finally met, the neighbors learned some interesting things. First, recall that SMART stands for San Marcos Air Rail Transit. It’s located right where the airport, railway – and unfortunately the river – all meet.
Anyway, here’s what the developers said to the neighbors:
So basically they’re planning a 2000 acre truck loading and unloading industrial site, right on the river? It’s gone from SMART to SMT? (Maybe the R was supposed to stand for River. The San Marcos All runs down to the River Terminal. Wheeeee.)
In response, the developers say, “Look, back in 2018, council told us this was the right place for heavy industrial.”
But let’s check that for a second:
– First off, in 2018, it was 900 acres, and now it’s 2000 acres.
– Second, clearly in 2018, the whole point was that the airport is right next to the railroad. Otherwise, you’re just building a massive industrial complex on the river.
So as best I can tell, that is the plan: a massive industrial complex on the river. This really seems to be a terrible idea. Unfortunately, this council (minus Alyssa) really has heart eyes for corporations.
…
Items 16 and 18: Starting on next year’s budget.
Council and department heads had a big two day workshop, where they envisioned the city for the next year in broad terms. This statement is the result, and it’s supposed to be the starting point for the new budget.
Here’s what they came up with:
Each of those has 5 or 6 sub-points, and then each of those has another 2-3 sub-sub-points. So for example, under Quality of Life & Sense of Place, it says:
The whole thing is pretty long. If you’re curious, read it all here. That document is supposed to be the scaffolding for the actual budget, which gets built over the spring and summer.
As for last Tuesday, there was not much more additional discussion. Max Baker spoke during the public hearing portion, and made some points:
– Weren’t you all going to do an Equity-based budget through a DEI lens?
– Annexing distant neighborhoods blows a hole in your future budget. As soon as they’re built, you have to provide fire/EMS/PD, as well as utilities, and it costs more to staff new far-flung firehouses than you’re bringing in with taxes. Sprawl is expensive for the city.
– Budgets are moral documents.
These are all good points!
Alyssa asks her colleagues to consider a participatory budget process next year. Get the community involved. This would be great. Maybe CONA reps could solicit input from their neighborhoods, and then contribute ideas when Council puts together their strategic goals.
(Because I’m a pessimistic jerk, I can also imagine neighborhoods coming up with goals that I’d find awful, like “let’s keep poor people far, far away.” So there need to be checks and balances.)
Item 19: Sam Aguirre used to be the lawyer for P&Z, and Michael Constantino was the lawyer for City Council. (I’m sure they both did more than that, but that’s what they were on camera for.)
Sam got hired by Seguin, so he left in the last year or two. Then Michael Constantino retired, a few months ago, so we had a vacant attorney position.
And now we’ve poached Sam Aguirre back! Welcome back, Sam.
Item 21: You know McCoy’s, the local building supplies place on Wonderworld:
They’re actually a chain with 84 stores across Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. But their headquarters is here in San Marcos:
That’s on northbound I35, past HW 80, right by the DMV.
I went down a bit of a rabbit hole reading their little history blurb from their website, which I found weirdly fascinating. The McCoy great grandfather started off selling roofing supplies in Galveston in the 1920s, which is obviously lucrative every time a hurricane hits, although they make a point to say they didn’t price gouge. They switch to building supplies in the 1940s. They move the headquarters to San Marcos in the 1970s. They kept growing and did very well in the 80s.
But then in the 90s, Home Depot and Lowe’s show up on the scene. This is the part I was very interested to read. How do you handle it when the Walmart of your industry comes to town? McCoy’s took a hit and described it pretty unflichingly. They closed about 1/5th of their stores and scaled up their existing stores. They experimented with ideas that failed and they shut them down a few years later. But it’s now been 30 years, so I think they made it through. It’s still entirely private and family owned, and they also own a bunch of land and a big ranch operation in west Texas.
So back to that headquarters, on I-35. They actually own a really big tract of land right there:
They want to turn that land into a campus headquarters, here in San Marcos, for all their corporate leadership trainings and such. They’re picturing a campus with a lake and outdoorsy things where all the store managers can come be trained and hold retreats. Right now, they hold a bunch of these in Cedar Park. Wouldn’t it be nice to bring all that business home to San Marcos?
City Council is 100% sold. I’m not saying I’m opposed exactly, but this is catnip to good ol’ boys. Jude Prather and Mark Gleason were fanning themselves with delight at the idea of a giant McCoy’s World of Leadership here in town.
The current CEO, Meagan McCoy Jones, spoke in person about this. She made a compelling case for the campus. My favorite part was when she had to explain that there are homeless people currently camped out on this land, and this was going to end. She approached it fairly well: she started with her own efforts to combat homelessness and acknowledged the complexity of the problem, and then bluntly said, “but it will be a closed campus.” You understand.
Currently, this project is a long ways off. They were here today because they’re going to need to deal with these two light-red highlighter marks:
Those are roads on the transportation master plan, but McCoy’s is not on board with them, so they need to be removed. Sorry, roads.
Item 22: More murals!
We have a San Marcos Mural Arts program. You can see a nice slide show of the murals here.
I particularly like the one across from Big HEB, which isn’t on that slide show:
It always cheers me up. Also, I had to go take that photo in person. That’s how dedicated I am. I tried to grab a photo off Google Maps, but it’s out of date:
Anyway, the next one coming is going to be here:
That is the back of the Old Hays County Justice Center, which currently houses Industry and Aquabrew. That’s the view heading towards downtown on LBJ from I35.
A funny thing is that these photos are in the slide show on the Mural Arts website:
Isn’t that the same wall? I definitely have seen that mural. I like it, too! Here’s another shot of it:
I couldn’t remember if this mural was currently up or not, so my Staff Photographer swung by and took a current photo here, too:
So there you have it. As far as I can tell, there used to be a mural, and then the mural got painted over, and now there will be a new mural.
The Arts committee is estimating $100K to paint the mural. But they’ve been planning this for years, and it’s a giant project. It does not bother me to spend significant money supporting local artists and making San Marcos interesting and beautiful.
Item 24: Meta-committees.
True to her word, Alyssa Garza wants to tackle the issue of skewed representation on San Marcos boards and commissions. Namely: it’s really old, white, and male. Maybe not as entirely white and male as it used to be – which Jane Hughson often points out – but still way out of sync with the demographics of the city.
To that end, they’re going to form a committee-on-committees. Alyssa, Matthew Mendoza, and Mark Gleason all volunteered to be on it and study the problem.
Items 25/26 were Double Secret Executive Sessions on the Meet-and-confer renegotiations.
Two days later, on Thursday, the first Meet-and-confer renegotiation session was held. I can’t find a video recording of it, though, so I haven’t watched it. Mano Amiga was there in person, I think.
Q&A from the press and public:
Max Baker came back and raised a few issues in quick rapid-fire:
Answer: there was never a consensus from Council to do so, but hopefully when we hire a new DEI coordinator, they’ll be on top of things.
Nobody really answered, so I’ll take a stab at it: wikipedia tells me that inland ports are on rivers and dry ports are just land. I suppose the SMART Terminal is on the river, although it would be pretty gross to use the San Marcos River for port purposes. I think Max was just pointing out that since Air and Rail are not part of it anymore, the SMART Terminal is just a SMT Terminal.
The real problem is that 6 out of 7 councilmembers are fine with SMT being an inland port or a dry port, and just want the neighbors to shut up about the whole thing.
No one responds to this, either, as most of them are very smitten with the McCoys, and also the McCoys conversation has just barely begun, anyway.
This is largely about the empty storefronts downtown, which really depress the whole vibe of the place. Landlords want Austin businesses to come down and pay Austin rental prices for the space, and they seem content to just wait as long as it will take to find a tenant.
At first, Jane is hesistant, and seems to be saying that when they looked into this before, vacancy taxes weren’t legal in Texas. But Max says that he’s emailed in a bunch of different models for how to do it, like one where you charge them for extra trips by EMS/Fire Department/SMPD, which happen a lot more when a building sits vacant.
So: are vacancy taxes legal in Texas? Seems to be. There are two kinds of vacancy taxes: residential and commercial. I can’t find anything that says they’re illegal, but I can’t find many examples of cities implementing them either.
Here’s a useful pamphlet from UT Law, but it’s from 2010. It has a bunch of helpful info, plus examples. Eg:
Dallas Downtown Vacant Building Registration Ordinance The Dallas ordinance requires owners of downtown vacant buildings to register their properties and pay a registration fee of $75, an inspection charge of $185, and a small additional fee per square foot of the building. Owners must submit a plan detailing a time schedule for correcting violations, a maintenance plan, or plans for renovations or sale of the building. The owner is required to submit an updated plan at least once every six months. Violations of the ordinance can result in criminal penalties, civil fines ranging from $500 to $2,000, and administrative penalties. The owner must carry commercial general liability coverage with a minimum combined bodily injury and property damage limit of not less than $2,000,000 annually.
I’m in! Let’s do it.
In the end, Jane asks if there’s a consensus on Council for staff to research vacancy tax options and bring something forward. And there is! So this will come back.
Morning, all! This was an impactful meeting. Among other things, we banned puppy mills!
Let’s dive in:
Hours 0:00-1:01: Some rezonings – Council giveth commercial zones, and council taketh it away.
Hours 1:01-2:06: In which Council divvies up $500K to 38 nonprofits from around town.
Hours 2:06 – 2:51: The pet ordinance is finally passed! And a note on an incident that happened with P&Z appointments.
That’s all I got! Enjoy your spring break, if you celebrate that kind of thing. Otherwise, enjoy having a little less traffic in town for a week.
Citizen comment:
I had a stray thought about the SMART Terminal. I was on Charles Austin, next to the baseball stadium, stopped at a train. The train was going slower and slower, headed east towards 35. I was doing the thing where you try to figure out if the train is going to come to a complete stop before it gets across your path and trap you, or if the last car will make it across and set you free.
It occurred to me that the train was probably headed in the general direction of the future SMART Terminal. And I remember that it takes a train 1-2 miles to come to a stop. So imagine if we have a new SMART train intersection just east of town? The number of stopped trains is going to go through the roof. Traffic is going to be hella gummed up by stopped trains, if the SMART Terminal delivers on what they’re claiming.
I mean, we should still focus on the river pollution and massive amount of concrete, and all the rest of the questionable parts. But let’s save a little angst for worrying about the future train stoppings of San Marcos.
…
On to the meeting!
Item 6: Way up by Whisper Tract, some developers want to rezone this little blue piece:
It used to be partly zoned Manufactured Homes, and partly zoned Future Development. They want to make it all Heavy Commercial.
Here’s what’s at the eastern tip of that little blue rectangle:
That is, the Saddlebrook mobile home community.
So is it fair to build heavy commercial next to them? Let’s put it this way: it would never be proposed next to wealthier neighborhoods. At the same time, the western edge of that little blue rectangle is along I-35, and it’s reasonable to put Heavy Commercial along the highway. Finally, the folks at Saddlebrook might like some commercial services like restaurants or laundromats or whatever nearby. (But there’s no guarantee this will be restaurants or laundromats.)
Jane Hughson and Mark Gleason aren’t sure about the size of the project on the east side being so close to the community. A 40 foot building with 30 foot setbacks is still pretty looming, even with a privacy wall.
The developer talks in person. He and his partner are from central Texas, and they make little spec buildings that can later be configured for small businesses. So it’s unclear what would end up there.
In the end, council approves it unanimously. Hopefully it turns out the businesses that move in make good neighbors.
…
Item 7: Two acres in Cottonwood Creek, off 123. This one kind of pissed me off.
Here’s Cottonwood Creek:
It’s down by the high school. Bowie Elementary is in Cottonwood Creek. (I realized I could get some useful maps off the planning department website.)
Here’s a close up. Today’s proposed rezoning is for that little red trapezoid, in the yellow circle:
This area has seen tons of development in the past 2-3 years. In fact, this little red piece in that blue circle:
is right where this new Chevron just went in:
So back to the subject property: right now it’s zoned General Commercial. The developer wants to re-zone it CD-4. In theory, you can still put commercial in CD-4, but that’s not what will happen. It will be townhomes or apartments.
Here’s the thing: the east side desperately needs commercial. They shoudn’t have to drive so far for grocery stores and basic retail. And that’s not just my opinion – the city planners are constantly saying that people on the east side tell them this.
And furthermore, many residents wrote in on this very item so say so! Apparently Council got letters from people in Cottonwood Creek saying to please keep it commercial. This is not hypothetical! They were told exactly what the neighbors want!
The developer is arguing that the property has sat there for 20 years and nobody has wanted to put commercial there, so therefore he should be able to re-zone it. But he’s being a twerp. He knows that commercial lags behind residential, and residential is finally just now getting built. If you don’t set aside land and earmark it for commercial uses, an entire area will get zoned residential and by the time someone might like to put a restaurant in, there won’t be viable places left.
Mark Gleason seems to be toting water for the developer. He knows the neighborhood wants commercial there. First, Mark asks what commercial is allowed in CD-4. He’s told that all kinds of commercial is allowed – offices, restaurants, etc. Could be a lot of possibilities! (But it won’t.)
Next, Mark asks the developer directly: “Are you looking to build housing? Or are you looking for more flexibility?”
Here’s what that means, “I have constituents that don’t want housing there. I want to be able to tell them I voted for flexibility. Could you supply me with my excuse?”
The developer cheerfully agrees that he is all for flexibility! We love flexibility!
Jane says dryly, “Clearly they are going to reduce the amount of commercial and add housing. Otherwise they’d just stick with the existing commercial zoning.”
Mark says, “I’m a yes on this one. I hate to lose commercial, but I trust the developer!”
Gentle Reader, listen to me: do not trust developers.
Alyssa Garza weighs in: she’s opposed, because of all the letters they’ve gotten from residents who are opposed to this. They all want commercial services to be built there.
Mark and Jane tut over how it’s a weird place for commercial, because it’s not on 123 directly. It’s a little off 123.
The vote: Should the little red trapezoid become apartments/townhomes?
Yes: Mayor Hughson, Mark Gleason, Saul Gonzales, Shane Scott, Matthew Mendoza, Jude Prather
No, keep it commercial: Alyssa Garza
This is really hypocritical. Right now, the VisionSMTX comprehensive plan is working it’s way through P&Z and City Council. The historic district has turned out in large numbers to complain. Several members of P&Z and Jane Hughson are going through the proposed plan closely, with an eye to preserving neighborhoods and preventing anything from happening to them.
The most sacred thing in the world, based on all language being used to criticize VisionSMTX stuff, is the voice of a neighborhood for self-determination. Neighborhood plans! Neighborhood character studies! Ask the neighborhood if Zelick’s should get a CUP! Neighborhoods are sacred.
But this vote tells the lie: we didn’t mean all neighborhoods! Sorry for the confusion. We just meant that we should pander to the noisy, wealthier neighborhoods west of I35. Cottonwood Creek wants to preserve that red trapezoid of commercial on the corner? Sorry, suckers!
Finally: we do need housing. There are multiple, competing needs here. But you shouldn’t pit one need against another. The whole city needs housing, but it doesn’t need to come out of Cottonwood Creek’s limited options for commercial development.
Item 15: Human Services Advisory Board . This is an item that’s dragged out for months.
The city allocates $500K from the General Fund for nonprofits every year. A bunch of nonprofits apply for it. HSAB reads the applications and recommends to council who should get how much. Council takes the recommendations and then redoes it all, re-allocating money all over the place, which is what happened tonight.
The difference this year is that the first set of HSAB recommendations made everyone so mad that Council came up with new guidelines and then asked HSAB to meet again and re-do everything. So the allocations are several months behind schedule this year.
I think HSAB tried to be exceedingly objective and impartial, and ended up being rather algorithmic. What I can’t tell is:
Anyway, they re-do it all.
In case you’re curious, here are the recommendations from HSAB – both last December’s recs, and then revised for Tuesday’s meeting (but not necessarily what Council adopted):
“CORN” is in a big circle because that nonprofit doesn’t exist anymore. (I guess it didn’t have the juice.)(Sorry, that was corny.)(I’ll stop now.)
This discussion started during the 3 pm workshop, and then wrapped up during the official council meeting.
First, Council reduced the funding for a bunch of agencies:
Reductions:
MELJ/Iron Sharpens Iron: from $33K to $0.
HOME Center/Emergency Motel Program: from $20K to $15K.
Treasured Protégé /Protégé Program: from $13K to $0
Rough Draft/Superhero Art Program: from $3K to $0.
Communities in Schools/Counseling SMCISD: from $7K to $3.5K.
ACCEYSS: From $35K to $30K
Here are some things to note:
Rationales weren’t given for every reduction. Of the ones that were:
So if my math is right, that saved them roughly $70K to dole out. (Including the CORN money.) During the 6 pm meeting, they increased funding like so:
Increases:
Hays County Food Bank: $30K to $40K
Combined Community Action/Meals on Wheels: $3K to $15K
Nosotros La Gente/”Viva Zapatos” Shoe Drive (no website): $5K to $10K
Salvation Army/Emergency Assistance: $27.5K to $35K
St. Vincent de Paul: $16.5K to $20K
School Fuel/Weekend Food: $19.5K to $24K
Youth Service Bureau: $4.4K to $10K
Southside Community Center/Specific Assistance: $4K to $16K
One last one that Jane referred to as “Emergency” to $30K . I lost track of what this was and can’t figure it out. I can’t tell if this is something that was reduced to $30K or increased to $30K.
Alyssa reiterates that she’s particularly angry about reducing MELJ/Irons to $0, and HOME Center from $20K to $15K. In my summaries above, I didn’t really convey how frustrated she was with the fickle and random shuffling of money above.
On MELJ/Iron Sharpens Iron, I agree: Council really dropped the ball. (Also, they kept calling it “MELI” instead of “MELJ”, which doesn’t instill a whole lot of trust.) Here’s the blurb from their application:
Iron Sharpens Iron uses a multi-faceted approach to address the challenges that reentry poses for nearly 40,000 individuals annually in the city of San Marcos. Iron Sharpens Iron program model assists those persons who’ve been incarcerated by determining what their needs are during the intake process that will enable them to be successful in the community in which they are living. We have support mechanisms in place that will enable this population and their family members to have somewhere to go to seek assistance with financial issues, substance abuse referrals as well as discussion of academic interests, employment and any legal situation that may have not been resolved. This includes sharing ideal strategies and best practices for living a crime free life. This particular project will have a large reach to multiple entities including those that have been or parole and their families. We’ve learned that those persons who have lived experience that are included become the best educators on social justice change as it refers to “imprisonment” and successful re-entry back into their respective communities. This project will allow us to increase awareness to corporations and municipalities to participate in inclusion of those labeled a felon-as well supportive things for the population that we are currently serving and extend more to the family members.
Council keeps saying that community safety is their highest priority, and they’re freaked out about crime. But they only seem aware of punitive, authoritarian ways to combat crime. They don’t seem to see the point of nurturing and supporting people who have committed crimes in the past. (Except Alyssa. All of this is except Alyssa.) It’s like it’s off-putting for them to consider the humanity of people who’ve been incarcerated.
First, that’s gross. You judge a society by how it treats its prisoners, not its princes.
But second, it’s impractical. If you want crime recidivism to decrease, you should do things that help people transition out of incarceration and into stable lives. Instead, we’re taking an authoritarian approach. Keep making life harder for them! The beatings will continue until morale improves, as they say.
…
One final thought, and I hope I don’t offend anyone: I feel a little weird about School Fuel. Kids get sent home with brown bags of food that is supposed to help with food insecurity over the weekend. But it puts poor kids in a weird, possibly stigmatizing position to have to get a Poor Kid’s Food Bag right in the middle of a social situation, and take it home on the bus with a bunch of other kids.
I’m not really criticizing anyone who is taking time to help others in this community. There’s a lot of need, and it’s important that a kid knows they’ve got some dependable food over the weekend. And there’s probably not that much stigma in a community that’s pretty used to widespread poverty. It’s just something that crossed my mind.
…
Updated to add: The 40K number in the MILJ application above – “nearly 40,000 individuals annually in the city of San Marcos.” – can’t possibly be right. The whole town is only around 70K. I don’t know where they got that from, but it’s nonsensical.
Item 12: The long-awaited conclusion to the Pick-a-Pet Problem!
This is over a year in the making. It first came up last February, and then again in November, and then the second time in November, when it got kicked back to the Animal Services Committee.
Here’s what the animal experts want:
The idea with that last one is that cats are really unhappy in animal shelters, and it’s terrible for their health, and only 2% of cats are reclaimed. Usually, if you return the cat to wherever you picked it up, it’ll find its way home.
In the past meetings, all of these points were contentious. Gleason in particular was uncomfortable with every bullet item above, although he wasn’t alone. The puppy mills were debated at length last February, and the microchipping/TNR/sterilization were debated this past November. The idea is that hopefully during the Animal Services Committee meetings Jane Hughson, Alyssa Garza and Mark Gleason all reached consensus on those issues, and now the full council can vote.
So here we are!
Mark starts off: I now can support this bill! Here’s the changes that make me okay with it:
Jane Hughson says firmly, “The Canine Care Certification thing isn’t actually in the ordinance.”
Mark: “I know, but we can look into it in the future.”
Alyssa says, “I thought at the last committee meeting, we walked back the 5 day holds for cats?”
Jane agrees. She thought the TNR superceded it. Plus, the logistics of spaying and neutering mean that cats end up held for 2-3 days anyway, before being returned to their neighborhoods.
The animal guy says community cats will be TNR’d, and household cats will be held for five days.
Mark Gleason asks, “How can you tell the difference?”
The animal guy admits it’s murky sometimes, but you do your best. Thankfully, they don’t go down the path of going in circles on the murkiness of distinguishing house cats from community cats again, like they did in November.
Mark feels very strongly that any cat that isn’t a known community cat should be held for five days. He fundamentally doesn’t like the part where a housecat gets returned to its neighborhood.
Alyssa and Jane both support shortening the five days, per the experts’ advice, but they also agree not to pick this battle. In other words, let’s pass something, and see how much this helps. If in six months, we need to take further action to reduce the number of cats in shelters, let’s do it then.
I think this is good governance. Let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good. Don’t hold up a lot of important changes over this. Implement what we can, and then the experts can build a case for reducing the cat stray-holds if the shelters are still overburdened.
Matthew Mendoza brings up sterilizing dogs on the second impoundment instead of the third. Last year, Mark Gleason had changed it to three.
They discuss some of the exemptions – old dogs, specialty dogs – and they discuss how the shelter is understanding about times of crisis or fireworks, and how the shelter will pay for fence materials to repair your fence, and that kind of thing.
The vote: should the shelter spay/neuter occur the second time your dog is picked up?
Yes: Everyone but Mark Gleason
No: Mark Gleason
And then finally! We have a vote on the entire animal ordinance. I’m pretty sure this is what they end up voting on:
And here’s how it goes:
The vote on the whole animal bill:
Yes: It’s unanimous.
Hooray! No more puppies from puppy mill animals in San Marcos (starting in 2024)! Other good changes to reduce overcrowding in shelters!
…
Fundamentally, this is a nerve-wracking topic. I love my pets with all my heart. No matter what is implemented, the animal shelter staff is going to have to use their best judgment, and it’s scary that you just have to trust that they have the best interests of animals at heart.
There’s an analogy to be made with policing. No matter what is implemented, police officers are going to be placed in situations where they have to make judgment calls. The breakdown around police is that there is widespread disagreement on whether police officers keep the best interests of all community members at heart, or if they show bias against some. They have not earned the trust of the entire community.
The two situations are quite different, but the uneasiness around trusting someone’s judgment in unsupervised situations is parallel.
…
Item 16: The city is still filling a few last vacancies on various boards and commissions.
I want to note one comment from Alyssa. First, you need some background: it happens sometimes that a vacancy is for a partial term. So when these appointments are being made, Council sometimes has to decide who gets appointed to a full term and who gets appointed to a partial term.
This happened on Tuesday, and Alyssa asked if this would be fully communicated to the person that got the shorter term. She was told it would be.
Alyssa then said something like, “Because I do not want another incident like the one that happened recently with Zach Sambrano on P&Z.”
So using my context clues, here’s what it sounds like happened: back in 2021, Zach Sambrano was appointed to P&Z, but he wasn’t told that he’d been given a partial term. So he planned on re-applying for another term in 2024.
But then, surprise! He discovers that he’s no longer on P&Z and they’ve appointed a new commissioner to his spot!
The problem is that this happens to Zach Sambrano and not William Agnew. (Nothing against William Agnew; I just wanted an example of someone who promotes the status quo.) This may have been truly accidental. But no one double-checked with Zach when he failed to submit an application, they way they would have done with someone over 60 who is presumed to maybe need an extra hand with technology.
This is how the status quo perpetuates itself – lots of soft decisions that all seem to tip in favor of the status quo. Individually, every instance has plausible deniability. No one can say with certainty that Zach wasn’t reminded to re-apply because of his outgroup status. But there is a pattern of behavior that all seems to tip towards preserving the status quo. The effect is that outsiders are shut out, and insiders reap extra benefits.
The San Marxist 