This was a busy week! We’re going to talk about comp plans, Meet & Confer, and we’re kicking it all off with a measured and reasoned invocation from the lovely Satanic Temple. Who’s in?
Here we go:
May 9th P&Z meeting: In which I just had to yell and stamp my feet about the stupid new comp plan, VisionSMTX+, for a minute.
Hours 0:00-2:40: In which Lanzifer Longinus graced us with a delightfully Satanic prayer, and I complain about 1100 acres of sprawl
Hours 2:40-3:17: The demoralizing conclusion of Meet-and-Confer. Spoiler: we never actually asked for the Hartman Reforms.
Hours 3:17-4:14: The eviction day now has an end date. There’s a slight reckoning slightly with how the SMART Terminal procedure went so badly. And an end to the General Contractor licensing test to pull a permit in San Marcos.
That’s a wrap for this week! Enjoy the beginning of low traffic season!
We’re going to start with a P&Z blog post, because I think the topic is important. This is nearly two weeks ago, when P&Z discussed the Comprehensive Plan, aka VisionSMTX.
Background
The Comprehensive Plan is the most high level vision of the city, which says things like, “We want more business here, we want to protect the river, we want more housing here,” etc. It’s big, general, and vague. Then when you go to draw up specific master plans – Land Development Code, Transportation Master plan, Housing plan, Environment, etc – you have to be consistent with the Comprehensive Plan. So it drives a lot of choices that get made down the line.
It’s going badly.
Back in 2020, City Council selected a group of 31 citizens, including several city council members and P&Z commissioners. This group met with consultants for two years. City staff also held outreach events every month or two, and sent out online surveys, and generally worked hard to solicit a wide range of community input. All this was drawn up into the VisionSMTX draft.
This draft went to P&Z in February, and the chair, Jim Garber said, “Oh dear. This is such a train wreck that there’s too much to discuss in one meeting. Let’s form a subcommittee.”
So four P&Z members and Mayor Hughson met a dozen times. They had so many revisions that staff just said, “We need to call it an alternate plan, VisionSMTX+.” This subcommittee ends up being so influential that I need to refer to them as “The P&Z Subcommittee”.
So now there are two drafts:
VisionSMTX, which took two years, $350K+ worth of consultants, and thousands of community hours, and
VisionSMTX+, which took five people about a month. (Ie, they added a little plus sign to this one.)
They are substantially different from each other. They’re so different that the staff created a comparison table to help us sort through the differences, and the comparison table is 74 pages long.
….
Listen: I have been struggling to write this up for the past two weeks. It’s really difficult to explain, because the various sides are not all having the same conversation. It’s a total mess.
…
The subcommittee read VisionSMTX and thought, “This document is going to let developers destroy our beautiful neighbohoods. People who live in the historic neighborhood, Dunbar, Barrio Pescado, San Antonio street, and so on, do NOT want their neighborhoods changed!”
What do they fear? Their fears are very slippery.
Giant apartment complexes, like the Cottages or the Woods. Developers are assholes!
Increased density in the form of smaller housing – ADUs, which are the tiny house-behind-a-house. Duplexes, triplexes, 4-plexes
Anything that threatens the “genteel” character of their neighborhoods.
So their fears range from the reasonable (large scale apartment complexes) to the jerky (fear of low income people being able to live near wealthy people).
…
Here are my personal beliefs on increasing the density of housing:
Cars and suburban sprawl are super convenient! I can drive to Target, get exactly what I want, and drive home in 30 minutes. I do not have to plan, or consult a bus schedule, or get sweaty riding my bike.
Literally, cars should never go away. There are plenty of people with mobility issues and resource constraints, and we have to take care of them, as a community. I will fight for your right to drive to work.
That said, we are currently gorging ourselves on cars and sprawl. This is a disaster.
On the global scale, the oceans are rising and extreme weather events are escalating. Sprawl and car-centric communities are not sustainable. Younger people are looking at 50 years of climate change. I worry about future generations.
On the local level, San Marcos literally can’t pay for enough cops and firefighters to cover the distant, sprawling developments. Plus, we’re prone to flooding, and we have a river which is one of the most special things on the planet. We’ve got to take this seriously.
And on the individual level it costs $7K-10Kish per year, to have a car-centric life, but centrally located housing is very expensive. That’s a losing combo for younger or poorer people.
I believe that wealth segregation is immoral. Giant apartment complexes are a way of keeping poor people all housed together. In my opinion, duplexes, triplexes, and 4-plexes should be scattered throughout every housing development. They can even be built to look like beautiful houses!
We are predicted to need 50K homes for people moving to San Marcos over the next 20ish years. It’s irresponsible to put all the housing in relentless swaths of single family housing. So what’s the alternative?
The way you take it seriously is that you create a world where it’s more convenient for people to live close to where they need to go. If it’s sufficiently easy for you to walk to work, you might choose to do so 2-3x per week. Smart people have worked hard to figure out charming, small-scale ways to create this. In fact, it should feel like our historic district! It should feel like San Antonio street.
Finally: I personally adore old homes and the historic district. I am not going to advocate for any plan that puts a large scale apartment complex in a charming historic neighborhood. But any plan that pretends “only wealthy people” is an essential ingredient to a charming neighborhood can fuck right off.
…
This meeting is too big and sprawling, and would be its own multi-part post for me to do it justice. I’ve struggled for two weeks now to write it up. So I’m going to massively shortchange it.
There is one key moment, at 3:30, that I want to zoom in on. William Agnew reads this sentence from the comp plan out loud:
Many of San Marcos’ original neighborhoods, especially those closest to Downtown, benefit from access to shops, restaurants, cultural amenities, employment opportunities, civic offerings, and recreation. The streets are well connected and for the most part, daily needs can be obtained on foot, by bike, or by car. New development can benefit from modeling and drawing inspiration from the treasured Historic character of these neighborhoods.
Then he says:
I live in one of San Marcos’s original neighborhoods. This paragraph’s just not true! I don’t have better access to all these amenities than most other neighborhoods in San Marcos! It just isn’t true. And on top of it, I don’t know how new development can somehow duplicate what it is that you all think I have that I don’t have.
The only place I can really walk from my house that would be considered goods and services is the Little HEB. It’s about 3 blocks from where I live. That’s great if I come back with one sack, but that’s only if I go to the grocery store each and every day. But you can’t walk back with your big shopping trip of the week and 8 or 10 sacks walking down Hutchison. It’s just not true! Other than that, there’s nothing I’m particularly close to anything. I love my neighborhood. It doesn’t bother me to drive to big HEB , Lowe’s, PetSmart, Target. So I don’t think this sentence is true. That’s why I’d like to get it out of there.
This is…delusional. Like, this is astonishingly delusional.
If you can walk 3 blocks to HEB, you are immediately nearby:
multiple churches,
laundromats,
bars and restaurants,
hair salons,
Shipley’s, Mink’s, Zelicks, North Street, Tantra (if it ever reopens)
You’re only another block from the literal town square.
The entire university is only a few more blocks away!
And right past that is the river itself!
Like, Bill Agnew literally thinks that he lives here:
when he is three blocks from this:
Staff continuously tries to explain that people who live in places like Cottonwood Creek complain that they have to drive long distances to get to stores or any other amenities. The “Complete streets” discussion is about places like Cottonwood creek.
But the P&Z subcommittee is on an entirely different planet. The existential threat to Belvin Street is the only conversation to be had. It sucks up all the oxygen in the room, and it will trample anything that the people in Cottonwood Creek might like to have.
…
What are the problems with VisionSMTX+? What was changed from VisionSMTX, without the plus sign?
1. ADUs. “Accessory Dwelling Units” are the little house-behind-a-house. You may have noticed that the Historical District is absolutely chock full of them. This is the gentlest way to increase density as people move to San Marcos.
The original draft, VisionSMTX, is pretty positive towards ADUs. The subcommittee version, VisionSMTX+, removes a lot of this encouragement.
2. “15 minute streets” This is a measure that professional urban planners use. It means this: without driving, what kinds of things can you reach from your home, by walking, biking, or using public transportation, within 15 minutes? It’s a way of quantifying how Bill Agnew can easily walk downtown, while people in Cottonwood Creek have to drive everywhere.
The subcommittee added “driving” into the definition. In other words, when the people in Cottonwood Creek have to drive 15 minutes to Target, it should get measured exactly the same as Bill Agnew being able to walk downtown. What breathtaking bullshit.
3. Comp plans vs Area Plans. So, the Comp Plan is what we’re discussing. It’s the biggest umbrella. Area plans are where neighborhoods get to say, “We are wealthy and we don’t actually like living next to poor people, so can we just not?”
The subcommittee wants Area Plans to take priority over the comp plan. The original comp plan calls for a balance.
4. Split “Neighborhood – Low” into “Neighborhood Low (existing)” and “Neighborhood Low (new)”. This would allow them to write different rules for Belvin than for new neighborhoods.
What about Cottonwood Creek, which would like to be more like Belvin? Fuck those guys! Existing neighborhoods aren’t allowed to change because the subcommittee has Historic District tunnel vision.
There are a ton of other concerns. I emailed back and forth with some of the public commenters – Rosalie Ray and Gabrielle Moore – and have their entire list of critiques. This is just too dense and meaty for me to do it justice.
…
One last point: Markeymoore was pretty amazing in the P&Z meeting, gently pushing back against problematic ideas, without ever being confrontational.
For example: Bill Agnew is taking issue with the sentence “Many areas in San Marcos today are single use.”
Markeymoore gently asks, “Why is that a negative sentence?”
Bill Agnew answers, “Because I think that the people who wrote that consider it negative. If you understand the plan and the new urbanism concepts behind it, that’s negative. To be single use is negative. That’s my objection to it. Yes, some of these neighborhoods are single use, but they’re good neighborhoods, and they don’t need to be presented as an example of something negative.”
In other words, Agnew does not have a problem with the sentence as written. The problem is the bogeyman in his mind that he is imputing to it. Markeymoore was able to ask from a place of curiosity, and he disarmed Agnew, who gave an honest answer.
To Agnew’s credit, he is very consistent and honest. It’s easy to pick on him because he says the quiet parts out loud.
…
So…what happens next?
They decided to have some workshops over the summer, to deal with some of these things. The comp plan is on pause until August.
Let me tell you, I do not have a great feeling about how this is going.
I’ve never blogged the opening prayer before! I usually just skip past it.
If you’re going to have prayers in your public space, you’d better allow any church, or else you’re definitely opening yourself up for a lawsuit. Which is how we found ourselves in the delightful position of having Mayor Hughson introducing Lanzifer Longinus, co-congregation head of the Satanic Temple, and I hope he doesn’t mind me borrowing this photo from his facebook post:
Here’s a transcription of what he said:
Let us stand now, unbowed, and unfettered by arcane doctrines, borne of fearful mind and darkened times. Let us embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat of the tree of knowledge, and dissipate our blissful and conforming delusions of old. Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations. Let us reason our solutions with agnosticisms in all things, holding fast to only that which is demonstrably true. Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of one or all. That which will not bend must break, and that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise. It is done. Hail Satan.
The sharp-eyed reader will note that everything he said is entirely sensible and reasonable. (The Satanic Temple generally fights for a lot of great political causes. If you haven’t yet, you should familiarize yourself with them.)
Crushing thy head! That seems like a disproportionately violent response – he only asked that we be judged by concrete actions and reason our solutions. Gee.
(PSA for the kids: there was once a wonderful sketch show called Kids In the Hall, which had a relevant Crushing Your Head skit. If you’re so inclined.)
There were several fire & brimstone prayers during Citizen Comment. I wanted to cherrypick extreme lines from the most frantic prayers, but I started to feel bad. I think these guys honestly are picturing slithering little oily shadows emanating from an air conditioning grate, like 90s era Buffy animation, spreading all over the room and maybe even getting in your nostrils. Must be stressful; let’s just let them be.
Next! Several speakers have some serious conspiracy theories going about Mano Amiga. These speakers were not just pro-police or pro-Meet and Confer contract, but genuinely deranged about Mano Amiga specifically.
A few themes:
Why do they all say “Mano Amigas”, with an extra “s” on the end?! Why pluralize “amiga”? (And wouldn’t the plural be “manos amiga”?)
They are convinced that Mano Amiga is getting millions of dollars, and one of them specifically cited George Soros. (As well as the VERA institute and the Institute of Justice, which are both good organizations, incidentally.)
Several of them mentioned the Marxist agenda. Aw, shucks, guys! I couldn’t help but feel flattered. Now, I’m not actually affiliated with Mano Amiga, but… [bats eyes invitingly in all directions]
Finally we had some regulars: a number of members of Mano Amiga and other pro-transparency speakers spoke up against the current Meet-and-Confer contract. The Meet-and-Confer contract gets voted on tonight. Other speakers are pro-police and pro-contract. And several regular anti-SMART Terminal speakers to give updates.
SMART doesn’t really come up on the agenda tonight, so let me give some updates:
Last time, Council reopened the development agreement and said, “let’s send the entire citizen list of requests over to the negotiation table!”
The developers wrote back a short letter: “Fuck off. PS: You signed a contract, dumbass.” (You can read it here.)
The developers announced that they were changing their name to Axis Logistics and also that they are now open for business.
(Keep in mind that they haven’t actually gotten their zoning for Heavy Industrial passed yet.)
To summarize: Council worked on this project secretly for years, and totally lost track of the fact that the public had no idea this was coming. They then announced and passed the development agreement before the community had had their first cup of coffee that morning. The community is absolutely furious, and Council is shocked, shocked that it played out like this.
…
Item 15: Rezone 104 acres of a giant parcel, out on 123.
This is weird and infuriating. So there is a giant housing development that’s been approved, called Riverbend Ranch. It won’t materialize for a while. We’ve discussed it here and here.
It’s very big – 1,142 acres. It runs adjacent to Redwood on the southern end, which is a concern, but possibly there’s an opportunity to get some sewer infrastructure to the good people there.
The plan has always been for it to be mostly housing, above the red line. (McCarty extension/Loop 110) (The part south of the red line is zoned industrial, which is the concern for the people of Redwood.)
Here’s how it’s currently zoned:
What do those letters mean? CD-3 is single family sprawl.
ie the charming mixed use downtown from Sesame Street. Or picture San Antonio street.
But in reality it usually looks like so:
Large scale apartment complexes. This is because our land development code lumps together those two types of zonings. So you can’t approve charming Sesame Street-scapes without giving developers the right to build large scale complexes. This is an unforced error – no one made us lump those together in the code.
Anyway, back to this picture:
The striped bits are supposed to be apartments and commercial. The developer is asking to change them the CD4 and CD5 bits to also be CD3. In other words, instead of having pockets of commercial and apartments, the whole thing should be single family sprawl.
THIS IS 1200 ACRES! It will now be 1200 acres of relentless single use housing! This is really shitty! The planning department knows better, because when Riverbend Ranch originally came up for zoning, they had to offer up certain percents at denser amounts, and they had to talk about amenities and commercial areas.
It turns out that you just have to wait a few years until everyone forgets, and then politely ask to get it rezoned into the cheapest and most profitable suburban sprawlscape.
THIS MADE ME SO MAD. This is why we need the comprehensive plan already in place. This should never have been allowed.
We’ve talked a lot about this. Last week, Chief Standridge explained the new contract, and tonight it’s up for a vote. During Citizen Comment, a lot of people spoke in favor of police, and a lot of people spoke in favor of increased oversight and transparency.
A trend I noticed: the pro-police speakers were all happy with the contract and urged Council to approve it. The pro-oversight/transparency speakers were all unhappy with the contract and urged Council to continue negotiations. That tells you who got the better end of the negotiation.
Since this is the second reading, it went straight to discussion.
The Council Discussion
Mark Gleason: “This is fair. Thank you to everyone.”
Alyssa Garza: “Community input is not dialogue. I’ve worked with people on both sides. We’re strongest when we’re unified. Why was there no town hall? Why no community forum?”
Everyone tried to answer Alyssa’s question:
Matthew Mendoza: “I wanted to take it to the voters!”
(Note: that’s not really a response. Alyssa means, “Why didn’t we discuss the Hartman Reforms with the community, and include their input in the negotiations?” Matthew means, “I wanted to let voters decide whether we should reopen negotiations.” These are different.)
Shane Scott: Chief Standridge listens to all this community input.
City Manager Stephanie Reyes: I followed Council direction.
Jude Prather: This is measured progress. We’re moving the needle. But we still need to be able to recruit the best officers.
Alyssa: How would the Hartman Reforms be an impediment to recruiting the best officers? They only affect you if you’re a bad officer. How are we okay with barely any change before and after this community push?!
Mark: We’ve heard what the community said! It’s not one-sided! Retention is so important!
Saul: You can’t have everything, but it’s a start. Being an officer is a terrible job.
Matthew: I appreciate the signature-getters. I have faith in the chief.
Jane: This contract is better than no contract.
Alyssa: This council, in executive session, put forth which reforms we cared about. The people in charge ruled out some.
All of a sudden, it dawned on me what Alyssa saying. She’s asserting that the negotiating team did not actually take the Hartman reforms to the negotiations. That City Council had an executive session, and told the city manager to scrap most of the five reforms. Our opening bid in negotiations was the diluted peanut scraps, and the only thing uncertain was how much SMPOA would want in increased compensation.
Let’s be clear: when you start a negotiation, you should start with your ideal position. Then you bargain back and forth, and chip off parts of the fantasy to get to a realistic compromise. But you start with your full wish list.
The key moment happened at 3:10. City Manager Stephanie Reyes gave the most crucial statement on the matter:
We took the direction from council, as far as the five Hartman reforms that Chief Standridge provided information about, and we asked Council for parameters, and then that’s what we went back to negotiations with.
We did get direction to move forward with the 3rd party arbitrator, and so that’s one that we brought forward to negotiations. We wanted to keep the second 180 days, and that’s what you all asked for. You asked for letters of reprimand to be considered during the promotional process, and we even asked if they could be considered public file vs g file, and SMPOA said no. The video review was something that, because of the difference and nuance, that was one that council said “no, let’s go ahead and keep that”. The vacation – the council discussion was very split on because of the financial aspect, but it’s also the fact of coverage and the fact that discipline doesn’t happen right after an action has happened.
(That’s a transcription, lightly edited for clarity.)
OKAY WHOA. Let’s unpack here.
Here’s my best guess:
Before negotiations start, City Council goes into executive session with Chief Standridge and Stephanie Reyes.
Chief Standridge gives basically the same presentation we heard last time, where he explains why the Hartman Reforms are unacceptable, and offers up two lesser substitutes: 1. End the 180 Day Rule: “We’re already doing the compromise position!” 2. End Delay of Interview Rule: “No.” 3. Public Transparency: “I’m pretending my hands are tied, legally. But we will incorporate reprimands into promotions.” 4. End 3rd party arbitration: “We’ll tighten up a few situations where the 3rd party can’t overrule us.” 5. End Vacation Forfeiture: “No.”
Council – minus Alyssa – thinks this all sounds swell. They direct Stephanie Reyes to go enter negotiation, and only ask for those two things: letters of reprimands and tightening up 3rd party arbitration.
SMPOA really does say no to one thing – making reprimands part of the public file. Everything else they agree to, in exchange for a salary bump.
The very last few sentences that Ms. Reyes says are also infuriating:
What I heard from the council discussion wasn’t “no, no, no, we don’t care what anyone says”. It was more about trying to find that give-and-take. A negotiation is a negotiation. You cannot go in and say “I need all these things or I’m not going to participate or I’m not going to be happy with this.” That’s just simply not what happens. It is a situation that is very difficult as staff that is the ones negotiating the contract. Ultimately they report to us. This is not an adversarial process. This is not a system of them calling the shots or us calling the shots. We’ve gotta work together, we’re a team. Ultimately this is about the betterment of San Marcos. We have to represent ALL interests.
This is just deliberately trying to make Mano Amiga look like jerks. “I need all these things or I’m not going to participate”? Yes, that would be terrible bargaining. But they did expect you to start with all five Hartman Reforms. You are not supposed to start by saying, “Hey guys, we preemptively threw out most of our wish list because your boss doesn’t like it.” That is sabotaging a negotiation.
Most of City Council genuinely didn’t want the Hartman Reforms, so they left them on the cutting room floor before negotiations started. We actually got almost everything we asked for. It’s just that Council decided to ask for crumbs.
Listen: if I were an A+ blogger, I would go watch the videos of the Meet and Confer negotiations. Because I’m lobbing a lot of accusations here, and I haven’t verified what actually happened during the negotiations. Sadly, you are stuck with a B- blogger who just can’t bear to go watch something so boring.
(If YOU want to go watch the negotiations, I would be delighted to hear your favorite parts.)
The Vote: Ratify the new Meet-and-Confer three year contract? Yes: Jane Hughson, Mark Gleason, Saul Gonzalez, Matthew Mendoza, Jude Prather, Shane Scott No: Alyssa Garza
Item 22: Ending the Covid disaster ordinance. Back in March 2020, we passed an emergency declaration. It’s been in effect ever since. Maybe it’s time to let it go?
This is not really about ending the emergency declaration. It’s about the 3 month eviction delay, which we began discussing last time. If the emergency declaration ends, the eviction delay automatically ends, too.
So when should this happen? On what date?
Mark Gleason is very worried about landlords. Thousands of new students will show up in August. Landlords need to be able to evict all their deadbeat tenants and then have another month or so for repairs and remodels before students arrive on August 1st.
Alyssa Garza’s sympathies are with the tenants. She keeps hearing from families whose leases expire this summer, and they just want to patch it through without getting an official eviction on their record, because that’s the kiss of death when you’re trying to find a new place.
Earlier this year, Council specifically set aside some rental relief money. But it won’t be available until August. Alyssa would really like to hang on to the eviction delay until the money is available.
In the end:
What day should landlords be able to evict tenants who are delinquent on their rent?
June 30th: Jane Hughson, Jude Prather, Shane Scott, Mark Gleason
July 15th: Alyssa Garza, Matthew Mendoza
(Saul stepped out for a moment)
So the eviction delay will end sooner rather than later.
…
Item 24: Shane Scott brought this item up. There’s nothing written down on this item in the packet, so I’ll just paraphrase what Shane says:
“You know how SMART turned into a holy mess? I went and talked with Max Baker, since he was on the SMART subcommittee back then with Jane Hughson and Mark Gleason. He said that he tried to talk to the developers about environmental concerns, and he wanted to talk to the public, and he wanted to talk to SMRF, but city staff wouldn’t let him. But when I was on subcommittees a decade ago, we were allowed to talk to whoever we wanted. What gives? Can we get that back?”
City staff confirms: When Bert Lumbreras was city manager, he implemented a policy that Council members can only talk to staff. Staff is the middleman that ferries info back and forth between developers, experts, etc, and city council.
The reason given is that, under the Texas Open Meetings Act, meeting with developers must be posted in advance under an agenda, and recorded for the public.
Mayor Hughson proposes a change: at the end of each subcommittee meeting, the subcommittee can decide if they want the next meeting to be a public meeting or a private meeting. They can also decide on any experts or outside participants that they want to invite in.
For the record, I don’t think this would have fixed the SMART Terminal disaster. I think Mayor Hughson and Mark Gleason were probably reflexively shooting down everything Max Baker said. If the subcommittee had to agree to bring in outside experts, they wouldn’t have let Max pick them.
And even if they’d brought experts, they certainly wouldn’t have let him go public with the whole thing. They never sought large-scale community input. They never launched a charm offensive to try to sell their vision to the community. Basically, they were just determined to royally screwed the pooch on this one.
….
Item 25: To pull a work permit in San Marcos, you have to be a licensed contractor. To be a licensed contractor, you have to pass a specific test.
Regular people have to pay $500 or so to hire a licensed General Contractor any time they want a permit pulled. There are some exceptions, but that’s the gist of it.
Saul Gonzales brings this item forward. He wants to end the GC testing requirement, and make it so that anyone can pull a permit. You’d still need to be licensed in plumbing or electricity before you did any tinkering, and you’d still get inspected before you get your certificate of occupancy.
Plus: there are only two cities in all of Texas that require this!
City staff explains. This law has been on the books since 1993. And actually, the “two cities” thing is wrong. It used to be us and Seguin. But Seguin killed their requirement, so now it’s just us. Ooops.
Everyone agrees that the it’s a terrible policy. So it will come back as a formal policy change.
Election day was yesterday, and it was a good one! Let’s celebrate some election outcomes:
District 1: Jessica Cain! District 2: Margie Villapando! The four bonds: All passed! Everything worked out great.
Thank you to all of you that turned out to vote, and to everyone who worked on those campaigns and put in the hard work. Let’s take a beat to celebrate! Ok, back to work.
(I am still embarrassed that I posted the wrong voting district last time. I promise to triple-check my work going forward.)
Onto last Tuesday’s meeting:
Hours 0:00- 2:04: We take a deep dive into the newly proposed SMPD contract. I found Chief Standridge to be kinda infuriating and I got a little steamed up about it.
Hours 2:04-2:58: Some zoning cases. And a brief trip down memory lane, in a gondola.
Hours 2:58 – 4:37: The latest on the SMART Terminal, putting boots on cars, and some talk of ending the eviction delay.
That’s a wrap! Enjoy those good election outcome vibes while they last!
Landlords are mad about the Eviction Delay still being in effect.
Community members rooting for good SMART re-negotiations
Both of these will come up tonight.
Item 1: Presentation on Meet and Confer negotiations
Background: After the whole mess leading up to Ryan Hartman’s termination, Mano Amiga called for five police reforms. The city negotiated the new SMPD contract and ignored the five reforms. So Mano Amiga circulated a petition to overturn the contract. Legally, City Council had two choices: either re-open the contract, or let the voters decide. Council decided to renegotiate the contract. The negotiation process is called Meet and Confer.
So, We Meet (and confer) Again
Here are the five Hartman Reforms from Mano Amiga:
City staff has met and conferred with SMPOA. They have a new contract they are proposing. At this past Tuesday’s Council meeting, there’s a presentation on the new contract. Then City Council will vote to adopt (or not) the new contract on May 16th. (They will definitely vote to adopt.)
Here’s the short version:
End the 180 Day Rule: “We’re already doing the compromise position!”
End Delay of Interview Rule: “No.”
Public Transparency: “I’m pretending my hands are tied, legally. But we will incorporate reprimands into promotions.”
End 3rd party arbitration: “We’ll tighten up a few situations where the 3rd party can’t overrule us.”
End Vacation Forfeiture: “No.”
City Manager Stephanie Reyes made a point to say that Chief Standridge was not part of the negotiation team, because it would put him in such an awkward position. He was only there as a neutral resource. (Who all actually was doing the negotiations? I couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t on the agendas of the Meet and Confer meetings. I watched a little bit of the videos – April 7, April 19, April 23 – but didn’t see any introductions, and I could only recognize Stephanie Reyes. There are no documents besides the presentation in the packet. So I have no idea.)
It’s a weird situation, where the police union (SMPOA) is on one side, and city staff are supposed to be on the other side, advocating for these five reforms on behalf of Mano Amiga that they don’t necessarily believe in. So it’s mildly amazing that they moved the needle at all.
In other words, my expectations were low, and they successfully cleared my low expectations.
The main presentation
I found myself getting pretty mad, listening to Chief Standridge. We’re going to unpack what he said, but there’s a couple main themes:
He acts deliberately obtuse about the reason activists are requesting a reform. “Why on earth would you not want to support our valiant officers?”
He is mushy about the difference between holding an employee accountable in their job, and someone’s legal rights in a criminal investigation. These are very different things, but he switches back and forth as if they’re the same.
He acts like something is legally forbidden, when he means “Well, we have the power to change the law in these negotiations. But until we do, it’s forbidden!”
He organizes his presentation according to the five Hartman reforms, so I’m going to do the same here.
So here we go.
The 180 Day Rule:
What Mano Amiga says about it:
What Chief Standridge says about it:
Before San Marcos negotiates a contract, there are some background Texas laws in effect. These are the Civil Service laws. If an officer does something wrong, Chief Standridge has 180 days to investigate, meet with all parties, and dispose of an investigation.
Last summer’s Meet and Confer agreement made it stronger. Now Chief Standridge has 180 days to file a complaint, and then another 180 days from the complaint to carry out the investigation and draw a conclusion or punishment or whatever.
Standridge gives some other contexts:
If it’s not a criminal offense, the 180 day clock starts running at the incident. If it’s criminal, the 180 day clock starts running when the crime is discovered.
Federal law mandates 300 days statute of limitations for sexual harassment
Statute of limitations for misdemeanors is 2 years, for run-of-the-mill felonies is 3 years.
Mano Amiga wants to end the statute of limitations altogether.
Standridge’s argument against this is basically:
That’s absurd! The statute of limitations for most crimes is only 2-3 years!
It’s really hard to get good evidence as more time passes! For example, a lot of video footage auto-rewrites every 30 days or so. It’s hard to collect old evidence. “An unlimited time span is unreasonable if we believe in evidence.”
This is Chief Standridge at his worst. He’s completely ducking the issue. The issue – which he is well-aware of – is that nationally, we have a big problem with police department protecting abusive cops and shielding them from investigations. One good way to do this is to circle the wagons and run out the statute of limitations. Then shrug your shoulders and say, “oops! Too late to do anything!”
Does SMPD do this? Clearly Chief Standridge thinks not. I genuinely have no idea. But Chief Standridge is being a jerk by not acknowledging that this is a broader problem among police departments in general.
The next thing that Standridge is doing is switching back and forth between the employment rules for police officers versus the actual law for civilians during a criminal investigation. When it comes to employment rules, there’s no statute of limitations at your job. Your boss can pull you in and say, “Wait a minute. What were you doing back in 2017?” It doesn’t mean that your boss can file criminal charges against you, but they can certainly open an investigation with HR.
The fact that the statute of limitations is 2 years for misdemeanors and 3 years for low-key felonies is 100% irrelevant. Who cares, Chief. You’re their boss. If you have a bad cop and something comes to light from 2019, don’t you want the option of looking into it?
Which brings me to my final point: some crimes have no evidence, and it’s just the end of the road. If the incident was a year ago and there’s no evidence, then you’ve done what you can do. End of matter. Why do you need to decide preemptively that all crimes from a year ago have no merit? None of them could possibly be investigated? Even if someone was deliberately obfuscating and hiding the matter?
Outcome: nothing changed.
Hartman Reform #2. 48 hour delay of interviews and video review.
Here’s what Mano Amiga says:
Here’s what Chief Standridge says:
Suppose an officer is accused of misconduct. That officer is given 48 hours advance notice and shown the video before they are interviewed. Community members are not. You may think this is unfair towards community members, but it’s actually unfair in the opposite way! It’s unfair for officers, because they can’t plead the 5th like you can. You’re allowed to ask for a lawyer before you talk to the cops. The officer is forced to give a statement and answer questions by Internal Affairs. They can be fired if they don’t cooperate!
Again, Chief Standridge is drawing a false equivalence, and it’s bullshit: if you’re being hauled in for questioning, you’re a civilian being questioned by the cops. You’re entitled to rights under the constitution. Whereas if the cop is hauled into Internal Affairs, he’s an employee being questioned by his job. That is not a criminal investigation.
Chief Standridge almost acknowledges this, because he cites Garrity, which is a court decision that says that a cop’s compelled testimony for Internal Affairs can’t be used in a criminal proceeding. In other words, everything is completely fair:
You can be forced to talk to your boss at work, but you can’t be forced to talk to the cops in a criminal investigation.
A cop can be forced to talk to Internal Affairs at their job, but that testimony can’t be used against the cop in a criminal investigation.
Nothing of substance was said regarding the 48 hour delay. It was just glossed over.
Then Chief Standridge talks about why officers are allowed to watch the video before they testify: studies prove that it improves officer recall by 11% when they watch the video before they testify! Isn’t that amazing?
It is a wild misreading of the situation. He is literally explaining the point that watching a video helps you remember what happened. No shit, Sherlock. That’s not the issue.
The issue – just to be painfully explicit here – is that watching the video allows a cop to get their story straight. Does the video show you planting evidence? Did the video catch something that makes you look bad? Wouldn’t you like time to prepare for that?
If we take Chief Standridge at his word – that he literally believes that showing someone a video is best practices because it improves their memory – then he ought to extend that practice to community members. Everyone should get to watch the video! If you haul in a burglary suspect, you should show them the grainy ambiguous video footage before asking them any questions. It might help jog their memory. RIGHT CHIEF? BEST PRACTICES!
This would have been a respectable answer from Chief Standridge:
“Eye witness testimony is notoriously inaccurate. Showing a video to a witness has pros and cons. It can solidify someone’s memory of what happened, but it also reveals to someone the extent of what the investigator knows. If a person has nothing to hide, it helps them give better testimony. If a person does have something to hide, then it allows them to sharpen what they hide in the testimony.”
But that is not what he said.
Outcome: nothing changed.
Hartman Reform #3: Transparency
Here’s what Mano Amiga wants:
(I know, Chief Standridge went out of order. This is 3rd in his presentation, even though Mano Amiga’s graphic has a 4. Ignore it.)
Here’s what Chief Standridge says:
By law, there are two files on every cop, an “A” file and a “G” file.
The A File: – Anything good that happens to the officer (a commendation, congratulation, or honor) – Any misconduct that ended in a suspension, firing, or demotion – Regular formal evaluations
The G File: – Soft things, like coaching and mentoring and job improvement things. Letters of reprimand go here.
The G files contain complaints by citizens, testimony from fellow officers, body-cam video, written reprimands and memos, and other details that justice advocates think should be accessible to the public.
Chief Standridge tells us that legally, he can’t release anything in the G file. His hands are tied.
But he’s misrepresenting the situation (and by this point I’m pretty irritated with his whole presentation). Here’s the thing: It’s illegal under Civil Service Laws, yes. But Meet and Confer contracts override Civil Service laws. So it’s only illegal until we pass a contract that says we want the G file released.
This exact issue is currently being debated in Austin:
Subsection (g) applies to Texas municipalities whose police officers (or firefighters) are civil service employees – that is, ones that don’t have unions that negotiate the terms of officers’ employment. Here, the city and the Austin Police Association, through what’s called the “meet-and-confer” process, do hash out a contract that could preempt Subsection (g) should the parties so agree. Both APD and APA leadership insist the G file must remain secret – that it will contain frivolous accusations that officers can’t defend themselves against, particularly under Austin’s current procedures that allow such claims to be made anonymously. However, during this year’s negotiations for a new police contract, the city’s Labor Relations Office is proposing to do away with G files.
In other words: It’s only illegal until your meet-and-confer agreement overrides it. Let’s file the G File in the Chief-Is–Misleading-the-Public File. (Or the circular file.)
And it passed! Unfortunately, San Antonio’s Prop A, also including some police reform, did not pass.)
Anyway! Chief Standridge says that they found a compromise position: G-files and reprimands should play a bigger role in promotions. Or rather, if you’ve got a bunch of reprimands, you’ll get “negative points” and won’t be able to earn a big promotion quite so fast.
Kinda shocking that this wasn’t already happening, but better late than never!
Outcome: Letters of reprimand and suspension will be included in the promotion process.
Hartman Reform #4: End 3rd Party Arbitration
What Mano Amiga says:
(I know, still out of order. It’s the least of our worries.)
Here’s what Chief Standridge says:
Suppose an officer gets in trouble. There are three kinds of discipline: – you get fired, – you get suspended, or – you get demoted.
If one of those happens and the officer doesn’t like it, they have two options:
Civil Service Commission Three commissioners hear the appeals. I think they’re local citizens
Hearing Examiner hears the appeals. This is 3rd party arbitration.
What I remember from back in January is Karen Muñoz saying that 3rd party arbitration almost always lightens the discipline, and that arbiters have a motivation to stake out a middle position.
Here’s where Standridge ticked me off in this one: he goes back to Ryan Hartman and says, “Now, Ryan Hartman appealed his discipline to a Hearing Examiner, and the Hearing Examiner upheld the punishment. We prevailed! The system worked! So why would we want to change something that works?!!”
In other words: these dumb, irrational activists! They don’t even realize that their poster child Ryan Hartman was such a shitheel that even the arbiter upheld his punishment! Aren’t they silly?
Okay, you got me? I’m glad that Hartman wasn’t let off with a lighter sentence? Woo-hoo? Now what about the rest of the cases, where they do get a lighter sentence from the arbiter?
Anyway: there’s something called a Dishonorable Discharge on an F5. This means you got fired for criminal conduct, lying, or insubordination.
Standridge proposes using that as a standard: if the appeal is filed for one of those three things – criminal conduct, lying, or insubordination – then the arbiter can’t overturn the chief’s judgment.
Standridge also says this is very progressive. It would be 1st in Texas! Unfortunately I’m too irked by this point to celebrate.
Outcome: Unless there’s evidence that the Chief is violating some ethical conditions, the arbiter can’t override the Chief’s punishment in the most serious cases.
Hartman Reform #5: Vacation Forfeiture.
Mano Amiga:
Using your vacation allow you to avoid a “break of services for promotion”.
Chief Standridge: “I’ll do a pros and cons list.”
Pros of vacation forfeiture : – We avoid a costly appeals process, because they admit wrongdoing. – It helps with understaffing because we’re not down yet another police officer – They still lose those hours of pay, and we don’t have to pay overtime to someone else, so it’s cheaper for us
So it’s a huge win!
Cons: he never got around to this part. (In fact, even in the slide presentation there’s a “pros” slide but no “cons” slide.)
He says the vacation forfeiture will show up on your G-file. So since G-files are now being used in promotions, it will show up there.
Outcome: Double-dipping on the G-file outcome again. Gets used in promotions.
Thus concludes his presentation.
……
There are some outcomes that didn’t show up in my recap above. Here is the full list:
We only discussed bullet points 1, 2, and 5. (And the 5th really isn’t a change.) The 3rd bullet – streaming future meet-and-confer meetings – is a good thing.
So the last bullet: why did SMPOA agree to this? What’s the carrot in it for them?
They make more money. Which, fine.
Both City Manager Stephanie Reyes and Chief Stan chime in about the violent crime rate some more, and their desire to focus on other things beyond this contract. The end!
The Council Discussion
Alyssa asks if the Chief could explain about Ryan Hartman and vacation forfeiture.
Chief Standridge’s answer:
Hartman’s situation is totally different than what’s being discussed here. In the contract, we’re talking about suspension. You can substitute vacation time for suspension.
“Administative leave” is a totally different thing, which means “we don’t trust you with a gun and a badge right now”. Hartman was placed on administrative leave for six months.
…
One moment that I want to highlight:
Chief Standridge gives a very sincere statement on the early part of the Hartman investigation. It wasn’t exactly an apology, but he did show remorse. It was something like, “The early part of the investigation did not live up to SMPD standards. We’re not going to look in the rearview, we’re going to look through the front windshield and move forward, and moving forward, we’ll have higher standards.”
It’s not exactly groveling for forgiveness, but he delivered it with sincerity and I believed him.
…
So what did the rest of Council say?
Jude Prather: This will make us safer!
Mark Gleason: Let’s move on! (And he uses the phrase “so-called Criminal Justice Movement”. I use the phrase “rolling my eyes at him”.)
Saul Gonzalez: Thank you thank you! Win-win. My son is a cop.
Matthew Mendoza: I have faith in this new agreement.
Alyssa Garza: Staff devoted a lot of time. Improvements have been made. It took a ton of work from our neighbors. Town Halls and conversations would help.
Jane Hughson: Thank you to everyone. Everyone worked hard to come up with an agreement that everyone likes.
….
Bottom line: This contract has some legitimate improvements to it. I think the Chief’s presentation was cagey and semi-deceptive, but there are actual improvements to the contract.
There is also still a lot left to fight for!
So there you have it. It will be signed on May 16th and that will be that.
….
Two final notes
1. There was a funny moment at the beginning when Chief Standridge says, “I want to dispel any rumors. I’m not going anywhere. We’ve bought a house here. Abilene is our home.”
Then he waits a couple beats and says, “I just said Abilene, didn’t I. SAN MARCOS! San Marcos is our home!” It was pretty funny.
2. Chief Standridge goes off on a tangent at 1:14 that is very confusing. He seems to think that the activists are being hypocritical by simultaneously believing two things: – there’s a lot of police misconduct – there’s no accountability
Standridge believes these contradict each other. You can’t have a lot of police misconduct and no accountability!
Here’s his reasoning: the public doesn’t find out about misconduct until the police department makes it available. Therefore, any time you hear about police misconduct, you’re also seeing evidence of accountability. If there was no accountability, the misconduct would all be invisible. Ta-da!
This is idiotic, of course. Misconduct is not invisible. People seem to notice when they were tazed, or searched, or intimidated, or stopped and harassed, even if the police try to hide and suppress it. Gossip spreads, reputations get formed.
It’s possible that Chief Standridge really does open an honest investigation into every complaint he hears about. But he’s naive if he believes he hears a complaint about every incident that occurs.
This has come up before. They’re building a fancy new campus here:
Those two red highlighter marks are future roads, according to the Transportation Master Plan.
But if McCoy’s wants their campus, the roads are in the way.
So the hypothetical roads must go. DONE!
(The vote was unanimous and this really isn’t a very big deal.)
…
Item 11: 67 acres here:
They want to turn it into apartments that feel like houses. It will be a complex, with the clubhouse and pool and all of that kind of stuff, but each apartment is a standalone house. I went hunting on the company’s website but I couldn’t find a sample photo.
The part I found mildly delusional was that they expect wealthy renters. Their typical renter has an $85K annual salary and wants a multi-year lease. That sounds like a pleasant fantasy version of San Marcos.
Shall we play The Six Criteria For Housing Developments game? YES!
Price Tag to the City: Will it bring in taxes that pay for itself, over the lifespan of the infrastructure and future repair? How much will it cost to extend roads, utilities, on fire and police coverage, on water and wastewater?
Good location. This is infill.
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?
We need an ongoing housing needs assessment. We need to know this.
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?
Not on the aquifer. Environmentally reasonable.
While I haven’t seen photos, I get the picture that the units have smaller yards than a house. So denser than single family housing, but less dense than apartments. Not the worst.
Social: Is it meaningfully mixed income? Is it near existing SMCISD schools and amenities?
I can’t imagine their target clientele is going to materialize. They’re imagining something wealthy-ish, though, which is not mixed income. It’s sort of near Hernandez and Rodriguez elementary school, and sort of near Miller middle school. (The developer is imagining adults without kids, though.)
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?
Not really. I suppose you have the outlet mall right there, but they’re not exactly a charming little public gathering space.
(Remember when you used to be able to ride a gondola back and forth for about 100 yards? Good times.
My overall opinion: This is a reasonably good use of space. It’s hard to put housing in between I-35 and some railroad tracks.
The vote: Yes: everyone except Matthew Mendoza No: Matthew Mendoza
I am not sure what he was opposed to!
…
Item 12: 169 acres at the end of the airport:
It’s got a weird cut out due to an airport runway easement, and there are some FAA height restrictions also because of the runway. The developer wants it zoned Light Industrial.
Max Baker spoke during the public hearing, and raised issues of pollution. He kept mentioning the future airport expansion. I don’t think this particular item is the airport expansion? But maybe it’s in the pipeline?
Anyway, apparently it’s easy to measure pollution, but hard to determine the source, and usually it’s vehicle traffic. (Maybe we should reconsider all this sprawl!)
The vote: Yes: Matthew Mendoza, Jude Prather, Shane Scott, Mark Gleason, Jane Hughson No: Alyssa Garza, Saul Gonzales
One last thing:
You can speak during the public hearing, but not during council discussion, unless a council member specifically calls you up to the podium to answer a question.
Which brings me to my favorite moment of the night: Alyssa Garza saying – very deadpan but not mean – “Is it possible for Mr. Baker to tell us what he has ants in his pants about?” I’ve been laughing about that ever since.
(Max was glad to comply, and went to the podium to talk further about CAPCOG and purple machines and air quality.)
The development agreement has been opened back up! Cue angels singing.
First order of business: who is going to do the actual renegotiating with Franklin Mountain?
Staff?
A subcommittee of council?
The entire council?
If you picked 1, then you agree with Jude Prather, Shane Scott, Mark Gleason, and Mayor Hughson.
If you picked 2 or 3, you have the company of Alyssa Garza, Matthew Mendoza, and Saul Gonzalez.
So option 1 wins, and it will go back to staff to renegotiate things.
Alyssa Garza brings up the issue of dialogue: the community has been asking for a back-and-forth conversation. They’re not getting it. Jane Hughson points out that council has heard hours of comments from the community, and she had a three hour conversation with three of the community members. I kinda see where both sides are coming from.
Straight talk: do community members really want dialogue? No, they want the SMART Terminal to be cancelled. But they’ll settle for dialogue because they suspect they’re going to lose the war, the moment they stop talking. If they truly believed that a majority of council was fighting hard for their interests and was willing to cancel the whole SMARTGASBORG, then I bet community members would feel comfortable relinquishing control.
Dialogue without changing the outcome is infuriating. No dialogue, but a responsive government who shuts down the whole SMART boondoggle would be fine. Dialogue is important, but I kinda agree that there’s not a whole lot of team-building to be done here.
Next order of business: which issues should be renegotiated by staff?
The planning director, Amanda Hernandez, gave a quick presentation. They amalgamated the 12 concerns from the community (that I posted here last time), along with an email from Ed Theriot and one from Virgina Parker. In addition, the emails were all included in the packet.
However: you know whose email wasn’t included in the packet? MINE. Since they had specifically invited the community to email any additional suggestions, I sent one in about labor practices, and specifically indexing the minimum wage to inflation.
And….<crickets>. So city staff: I hope you feel the mighty burn of my stink-eye, aimed in your general direction, from the safety of my own living room.
(Jane even asked, “Is that everything that was sent in?” And still they suppressed my wee little marxist voice! For shame.)
Matthew Mendoza proposes that we send all the issues to the negotiating table, and see where it lands. Everybody seems on board with that.
…
Item 14: Coming up in future discussions:
Car boots. Apparently we bought a bunch in the 90s and never used them, in part because we needed a court order to do so.
They’re going to discuss a policy where you can get booted if you have three unpaid parking tickets.
The idea is not to be punitive. In order to get the boot off, all you need to do is get in touch with the city and come up with a payment plan.
Item 17: Eviction Delay: Currently we have a 3 month eviction delay. This is still under the auspices of the Covid Emergency Declaration, which is still in effect.
There’s a couple things going on:
Some landlords are ignoring the delay and illegally evicting tenants early.
Some renters are intentionally skipping out on the last three months of rent, knowing they can’t be evicted
Rents are insanely high in San Marcos, especially with regard to the median income
So there’s bad circumstances all around, plus some bad actors on both sides.
Alyssa is very concerned that we will not be able to properly notify community members that the extension is coming to an end. This is grounded! We’re really terrible about outreach. Or rather, outreach is incredibly hard to do well.
Mayor Hughson puts a call out for media outlets to help spread the word. I GOT YOU, MAYOR HUGHSON! From your lips to my ear! I’m doing it!
There are a lot of details to hammer out, but expect to see it end around July 1st.
The San Marxist 