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.
The San Marxist 
Mr. Lumbreras implemented that restriction because there was a certain high ranking City Council member who was notorious for strong-arming and leaning on city staff members to get their way. He didn’t believe that it was fair for elected officials to be able to intimidate city workers. Especially if the workers believed their jobs were at stake if they didn’t comply with the wishes of that high-ranking city council member. I agreed with the policy and Council understood and respected it when I was sitting on the Dias. Council should continue to go through the City Manager, who is responsible for all hires and fires in the city since they are the ones in charge of that.
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Oh, I had no idea of the backstory. Now I’m TERRIBLY curious to know which council member it was! (If you feel comfortable sharing, you can email me at thesanmarxist@gmail.com. But no pressure.)
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Funny how Shane Scott brought up the issue that forbade council committee members the ability to speak with a developer with a develop application up for approval. I remember in Nov 2013 when I made an open record request for the GSMP contract with the City, I noticed that their contract was up in October 2013. It seemed that the City was paying GSMP out of contract which was about $33 k per month. Thus started the renewal of the GSMP contract. Getting to Shane’s part, there was a big debate whether to use the City’s contract or the one GSMP was pushing. Many on City Council wanted their contract version, but Shane and possibly others wanted to use GSMP’s contract. Thus, there was a long council session with many amendments with Shane reluctantly voting for. At the end, Shane reversed his vote on the main motion at the 1am hour or so and all was put off til another meeting. At one point Shane frustratingly stated that he helped Adriana Cruz and the GSMP craft their proposal. So there are two parts to the City’s relationship with GSMP, the economic planning that GSMP would do and the money from the contract that they would get. It was and still is illegal to help an applicant contractor with the City to have help to gain that contract from a voting member of the council. Now Shane still doesn’t seem to understand the illegality and conflict of interest that meeting with an applicant would be since he wants to meet with developers prior. Also, having a current applicant developer as an expert for council committees is not a legal work around.
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I missed this comment until just now! I’m seeing how much more complexity there is to this now, than just Max Baker asking for an environmental expert to sit in on a subcommittee meeting. Hmm.
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