Last meeting of the year! Let’s fix the sidewalks, spend the flood money, and not drink the contaminated water under Guadalupe. And we’re going to overthink Citizen Comment and the HSAB grant money, while we’re at it.
We’ve got:
Hours 0:00-1:20: Sidewalk repair, flood money, and toxic chemicals in the ground – let’s talk about how we fix the city. Hours 1:20-2:37: In which which we scrutinize Citizen Comment and the HSAB grant money process. We also push back the final vote on VisionSMTX, date TBD.
That’s it until January 16th! Hope you enjoy a little of whatever refills your cup, between now and then.
People talked about: - Funding for rehabilitating various buildings in Dunbar – Whether we really want to change the name of Citizen Comment to “Community Perspectives” or not. – Concerns over police accountability – How Mark Gleason got a letter of admonishment from the Ethics Review Commission, for voting on items where he should have recused himself. Specifically, he voted on the meet-and-confer contract for the fire fighters union, after receiving several donations of different sorts from them. (Details here but all you can do is watch a video. There are no minutes or documents.) – Max Baker is starting a monthly San Marcos Civics Club, to get the public engaged and hold City Council accountable. (I imagine you could reach out to him on Facebook if you’re interested, and he’d be glad to have you.)
Item 1: We have a Sidewalk Maintenance Program.
Basically, the city looks for places where people are complaining, or there are pedestrian traffic accidents, or underserved areas, or high pedestrian traffic areas.
This is the type of thing they do:
Here’s what’s going on for the next year:
The five year plan is a little more loosey-goosey and responsive to changing needs, but here’s the tentative map:
Jude Prather: there’s been a lot of improvement to our sidewalks. Let’s keep the gas pedal on.
Shane Scott: It happened outside my shop. They were really careful about the tree roots.
Mark Gleason: It happened to me! They laid the sidewalk today. They were very professional and they were careful of my trees. Added convenience and safety.
Mark Gleason does have one suggestion, which is that the city should use goat paths to identify potential places for new sidewalks.
I think he means this kind of thing, where over time people have worn a little path:
Alyssa: Great job. One of my neighbors posted about their really positive interactions with the city.
Jane: We started thinking about sidewalks in 1992, we said “schools and grocery stores.” So we’ve come a long way.
One issue is how to add sidewalks to streets where we don’t have a right-of-way. In other words, how do we build a sidewalk in a high-needs spot, where the city doesn’t own an easement along the road? Jane asks about this.
Answer: It makes it a bigger project than the Sidewalks Maintenance Project. We have to collaborate with Public Works. It goes on the CIP list.
My two cents: We need sidewalks running out to the high school. I know it’s far away, because that’s where land was cheap enough to acquire. Do not put a bike lane that feels like part of the street down 123 – put in a proper sidewalk. All the way to the high school. (And do it now, because a lot of that empty land is zoned for housing and apartments, and putting sidewalks in will get even harder.)
Item 18: Flood money.
After the 2015 floods, we got a big chunk of CBDG money from the federal government. It comes in two flavors:
Housing assistance
Stormwater projects
For Housing Assistance, we built 14 homes and repaired some of the public housing homes on CM Allen. (We discussed a few of these homes last year, being built in Sunset Acres.)
It’s depressing that it took eight years to get these people into safe housing. I think the main reason is that there were five rounds of funding, and so those from the first few rounds got their housing sooner. Plus I’m sure there were Covid delays, and some of it was generic government red tape. The last few houses remaining were finished this past year.
Three applicants withdrew in 2022 and 2023, and at that point it was too late to get new applicants, and so the housing portion came in $1 million under budget.
On the stormwater projects, we’ve got:
Uhland Road Improvements:
This one finished up in the fall.
2. Midtown Drainage – Aquarena Springs and I-35
This one will finish in April 2024.
3. Blanco Riverine: Berm and Floodwall
This one is supposed to finish in June 2024.
We discussed this one briefly back here. It’s a really big project:
and it’s supposed to do this sort of thing:
Basically geo-engineering a place for the water to go when it floods, instead of going into Blanco Gardens.
4. Blanco Gardens Drainage Improvements
This one is supposed to finish in August 2024.
The point of today’s presentation is that as some of the projects wrap up and have a little money leftover, the money gets shuffled around to the other ones that are still ongoing.
There are some other projects that will take a little longer to finish: – Acquiring land for flood prevention – Electronic rain gauges that are tied into the flood warning system – 3 sets of permanent flood gates: Cape Road, McKie Street, and Jackman Street/Gravel Street.
This is all supposed to wrap up by 2027.
What does City Council have to say? Saul: On Barbara Drive: what kind of drainage? Looks different than Conway. Answer: It’s the same as on Conway. They’re both Open Channel.
Saul: Is it dangerous for kids? Answer: Velocities should be slow. Will have gates. Won’t have easy access.
Mark: I was personally affected by all the flooding. We’re still dealing with the ramifications.
Mark has a few questions: – Will the new raingauges be integrated with the WETmap website on the Hays county website? Answer: Yes. – Will emergency info/river flood data be shared with NOA? Answer: I assume so but I don’t know for sure. – When will rain gauges be done? Answer: End of 2023, but they’ll be tinkered with in the Stormwater Master Plan. – What kind of gate are you using for gating off those channels? Answer: Single arm. – So people are losing access to these alleys in Blanco Gardens. Are they aware? Answer: we sent notifications and knocked on some doors.
Shane Scott asks the hard-hitting questions: What about Quiet Zones for trains? Answer: That’s a totally different topic. Different grant money.
Alyssa: I was also in Blanco Gardens during the floods. As projects wrap up, can we get back to the people in these neighborhoods? We need to explain that we’re working through issues and they haven’t been forgotten. Answer: there will be ribbon cuttings, etc.
Saul: A neighbor said they’ll only be allowed to have 1 cable. Is that true? Answer: Yes. There are 3 telecom companies. Time-warner/Spectrum, Astound/Grande, CenturyLink/Brightspeed. Two of these pulled out of Blanco Gardens. So you basically only have Spectrum.
This is just a discussion item, so there’s no vote.
Item 19: There are some toxic chemicals under Guadalupe. (We talked about this here a few months ago.)
Short version: there’s a bunch of groundwater toxic chemicals – PERCs, TCEs, VCs – deep in the ground, leftover from some dry cleaning businesses 40+ years ago. They’re really not good, but the chemicals will break down over the next 100 years into carbon dioxide, a little chlorine, and water, which are not so bad. They’ve basically sunk down way underground, into this stuff called Navarro Clay, which is a super thick gunky layer that just sits there underground, above the water table of the aquifer. So we can’t really clean it up, but they’re also not going to get into the river or the aquifer water table. We mostly need to leave them untouched until they decompose.
Here’s the three properties we bought, at the site of the original contamination:
The official way to let the chemicals sit there is to set up a Municipal Settings Designation, or MSD:
In this region, no one can drill any groundwater wells. You already can’t, because it’s within city limits, but now you EXTRA can’t.
We notified anyone who has a private well within 5 miles of this site. That worked out to 109 well owners. None of them seemed particularly concerned.
Item 4: ”Citizen Comment” vs. “Community Perspectives”
Shane pulled this item from the Consent Agenda.
Backstory
Mayor Hughson decided to clean up the city ordinances on committee meetings. She flagged a bunch of things that were inconsistent or unclear. One thing she noticed is that “Citizen Comment” is a terrible phrase, because you don’t actually have to be a citizen in order to comment. It sends a bad message.
We’ve discussed this here and here. Jane suggested “Community Perspectives” and in the past two months, no one ever protested it.
Here we go:
Shane says that he doesn’t like “Community Perspectives” because it implies that each speaker represents the entire community, instead of their own individual opinion.
Look, clearly “Community Perspectives” is a bit dippy. It sounds like a church bulletin board. But Shane’s complaint is also silly. No one is going to think that some rando speaker is supposed to represent everyone in town. It’s not “Community Spokesperson.”
Jane, wearily: We’ve talked about this on a bunch of occasions.
Shane: I’ll just vote against it.
Jane: The entire list of all the changes?!
Shane: No, just this one.
Jane: You can’t just vote against one.
Shane: Oh right.
So Shane makes a motion: Keep it “Citizen Comment” after all. Alyssa seconds it.
Saul: I’m fine the way it is. Citizen Comment.
Matthew: I don’t care either way.
Jane: Honestly, I was concerned about changing it, because it’s been called “Citizen Comment” for years. Everyone is used to that. But I just don’t want anyone to feel excluded.
Alyssa: I appreciate that. But maybe we can just say something on the website.
Mark: I’m on the fence. Everyone knows it as Citizen Comment.
The vote to amend:
Keep calling it Citizen Comment: All seven councilmembers
Change to Community Perspectives: no one.
On a scale of 1-10 of importance, this is maybe a 2. Nevertheless, they got it wrong! “Citizen Comment” is bad because “citizen” is exclusive. Jane is exactly right here.
Off the top of my head, they could have gone with: – Community Comment – Open Comment – Civic Comment – Citizens-and-Not-Citizens Comment (okay, now I’m getting punchy)
I know they’re worried that changing the name would up-end years of familiarity. But that’s tunnel vision from being in the center of the action for too long. Most of San Marcos is not paying any attention to City Council at all! Those who know the phrase “Citizen Comment” are not emotionally attached to it. You can switch to “Open Comment” and we’ll all be okay.
They didn’t want to go with “Public Comment” because it sounds very similar to “Public Hearing,” which is a specific different thing.
Oh well!
The vote on all the little changes that Jane proposed:
Yes: Everyone. No: No one.
….
Item 21: Gary Softball Sports Complex is getting renovated.
There were no slides or pictures for me to nab for you.
….
Item 23: Human Services Advisory Board (HSAB) Funding Policy
We’re going to spend some time on this item, because it drove me batty.
Backstory
Earlier in December, we allocated $650K in grant money to local nonprofits. There were 34 applications. Each nonprofit got between $5K and $34K, except for the Hays-Caldwell Women’s Shelter and the Hays County Food Bank, which got $50K and $80K respectively.
I griped last time that Council makes these nonprofits jump through a lot of hoops, while we just hand out other money seamlessly and invisibly.
Guys. guys. We are about to get SO MUCH MORE micromanaging of this whole mess. We are going to nitpick this thing to death.
The current issue
Recall that the HSAB committee assigned points according to this rubric:
Jane is mad about Council Priorities being neglected. It’s only 15 points! Nevermind that people with nonprofit experience developed priorities 1-4, and that Council Priorities are somewhat redundant.
Here are the things that Jane’s mad about:
It’s not punitive enough if performance reports are late.
The Council priorities should add up to 25 or more points!
We want to know where the board members live. Do they live in San Marcos? Do they live in Kyle? In Austin?
They should spell out all acronyms. No unclear abbreviations. (I acknowledge this one. They really should.)
Complaint #1: Those Pesky Performance Reports:
Because last year was so weird, the money wasn’t approved until March. So the whole calendar was up-ended. The nonprofits were supposed to turn in mid-year reports when they re-applied for new funding in August. One nonprofit was late by one day, due to turnover in staffing. One other nonprofit was later, but ended up withdrawing altogether.
So there is not really a problem here: nearly everyone turned in their mid-year reports on time. Final reports will be due at the end of January.
First off, everyone seemed really confused about the calendar. It is legitimately confusing, because it was never spelled out clearly up front.
Here’s the normal situation:
A funding cycle is three years:
Year A: You apply and get your money. (Applications are due in August, money awarded in December.) Year B: You spend your money. (It’s a calendar year, Jan-December) Year C: You turn in your final report. (It’s due by January 31st)
If you are re-applying for funding, you’d apply again in Year B. So your final report from the previous cycle isn’t available yet, because you’re still spending that money.
Jane is acting like it’s a two year cycle, and that it’s just incompetence that keeps nonprofits from having their final report on time. The staff member gently tried to explain, but Jane kept misinterpreting the explanation. (Jane kept acting like the issue was nonprofits that skipped an application cycle, and she’s say things like “If they didn’t apply for a year, then they should just turn in the most recent report.”)
Alyssa: Working for a nonprofit, you are constantly dealing with so many grants, and this is a small amount of money. These are good people, overworked on a shoestring budget, and we’re offering them 50¢. Can’t we have just have grace for our neighbors? Let them work it out on a case-by-case basis with staff?
I’m going to skip about 20 minutes of haggling between councilmembers, but suffice it to say: No. We cannot have grace for our neighbors. Matthew Mendoza is the biggest hard-ass of all, harping on how everything needs to be promptly on time, no exceptions.
Jane: How about this: the report is due in August. We’ll accept late reports, as long as the final report is in before the committee needs to consider applications.
The staff member tries to explain again: this year, only half-year reports were due Oct 15th. The Board considers applications in November. So the nonprofits really can’t get final reports in by decision time. They can submit final reports eventually though.
Jane: We’re going to need to see the final report!
Answer: The final reports are due January 31st. So they could easily submit that for the following cycle, in August?
Jane: Yes. Have them print it out again.Thank you.
Bottom line: if you’re funded in Year A, you’ll submit that report two years later, when you re-apply for funding August of Year C. No one could possibly be late with their final report, because it was due seven months earlier, in January.
Alyssa, “This is really insulting, because it’s not actually a problem. Bigger granting agencies handle extenuating circumstances with grace all the time. We’re the ones treating nonprofits like they can’t handle being professional.”
Alyssa is right. The whole tone of this conversation is that nonprofits are naughty wayward children, and if they carry on, they shan’t have any figgy pudding.
Such naughty, naughty non-profits.
Complaint #2: Council priorities should add up to more points!
We’re talking about this slide again. Jane suggests that the points allocated should be:
2 years San Marcos Service (5 points 10 points) Office in San Marcos (5 points 10 points) Funding creates increase in service (5 points)
Everyone nods compliantly.
Alyssa: What’s the rationale behind increasing the first two and leaving the third the same?
Jane: No reason! We could do 10/10/10, make it 30 total!
This is exactly how haphazard this all is. She’s not actually making a claim about the relative merits of the bullet points. Council just felt neglected, since their priorities were only worth 15 points. (I think they settled on 10/10/10.)
Complaints #s…: Other Things
Jane would like to know which cities the board members live in. She doesn’t need to know their address, but she is interested to know if they live in San Marcos, or Kyle, or Austin, or what.
Jane wants to require them to spell out acronyms. (One application didn’t.)
No one objects to these two criterion, although I assume Alyssa rolled her eyes. I mean, it’s good manners to spell out your acronyms, but I wouldn’t make it a rule.
Matthew: Can we ask them what percentage this grant is of their total budget? Answer: We already know this, based on the information provided.
Jane: Could they could have a coversheet that divided the applications, with the organization’s name and their San Marcos address with their requested amount? Answer: no problem.
(I actually find this one quite reasonable. It’s just about improving the readability of the applications. And staff can implement this without inconveniencing the nonprofits.)
Jane: Will Council be able to review and vote on the final draft of the application and rules? Answer: No problem.
Alyssa has one final comment. “Can we see this level of accountability and reports when we talk about the police department, or the fire department, or public works? We give the police $322 per resident. We give the fire department $218 per resident. And we give public works $141 per resident. Yet we are wasting all of this time over the HSAB board, which works out to… $7 per resident. Can we carry this energy when we talk about budgets in general?”
Jane responds: That’s different. Those are all city departments with department heads that report to us.
Let’s analyze this last bit. Who gets micromanaged, and who doesn’t?
It is true that micromanaging city departments is different than micromanaging contracts and grants to external groups.
However, all of those departments have many external contracts that run between $5K and $35K, and those contracts do not get scrutinized by council. We just trust the department.
In fact, immediately before this item, we approved a contract for $1 million, for improvements at Gary Softball Complex. We did not check whether the contractor was a local company. (They are not local.) We did not ask the private company to explain what all the acronyms meant! We did not second-guess how council priorities were weighted in the selection criteria. We just voted yes, because we trusted the city staff that recommended the construction agency.
Furthermore, there are at least two Very Special Nonprofits that the city negotiates with directly. 1. The Greater San Marcos Partnership, or GSMP.
Back in 2021, we signed a three year contract with them for $400,000 each year. They get $1.2 million dollars! Isn’t that something.
GSMP has to submit a yearly report card. The last – and only! – time they gave an update to City Council was back in May 2022. I can’t find any yearly report cards on on the San Marcos website, so transparency is nonexistent there. From the GSMP website, here’s their yearly report from 2022. It reads more like a promotional brochure than a detailed report, though. Is that the same as a yearly report card? I have no idea!
Things no one on Council cared about:
Where the board members live. Do the GSMP board members live in Wimberly? In Austin? Who knows. Because no one cares.
The exact date that the report was submitted, or whether yearly reports are happening at all. City Council has not hyperventilated about this yet.
Whether all the acronyms were spelled out precisely. In fact, there are a lot of abbreviations!
What percent the San Marcos money is of their total budgets.
What a funny thing, right? (I actually wrote about the contract with GSMP here, but I was a newbie blogger and was still trying to get the hang of it.)
There has not been any discussion that I can see about this money since a work session in 2020. I did not watch the work session, but the powerpoint slides are very vague and uninformative.
Here’s the thing: I don’t think we should micromanage GSMP or Chamber of Commerce, either! We could have a philosophical conversation about how they benefit the community, but I think they basically do what they say they’re doing. (I’m not opposed to the idea supporting small, locally owned businesses. We can quibble about dollar amounts some other time.)
The point is that we treat these groups like professional adults. If they’re late, we pick up the phone and give them a call. If there’s a confusing acronym, we shoot them an email. We don’t act like a grumpy school principal who posts an additional rule on the bulletin board every time someone misbehaves.
Finally: it helps small locally-owned businesses if we lift people out of poverty. Middle class people can eat out downtown more than poor people can! Supporting the most vulnerable members of our community is actually best for everyone.
…
Item 24: Should we postpone VisionSMTX?
Right now, VisionSMTX is supposed to come around on January 16th for a final vote. In the meantime, a subcommittee had been meeting, and they’re recommending that we do more community outreach.
There’s a brief discussion, and Jane checks with everyone informally. It’s really hard to hear who is a “yes” and who is a “no”, but I think this is how it goes:
Check-in on January 16th, but not the final vote: Everyone except Matthew Mendoza Final vote should be Jan 16th: Matthew Mendoza
I’m not sure what Matthew is hung up on. He clearly has some strong opinions about this process, but didn’t quite say what’s bugging him.
Hello everyone! It’s been a whole Thanksgiving and Sights & Sounds since I last saw you. Today’s big topics are HSAB grants to nonprofits, and getting into the details of a can ban on the river.
Here we go:
Hours 0:00 – 1:51: A small apartment complex, a road name change, and we debate how to spend $650,000 of HSAB grant money.
Hours 1:51 – 3:03: New ACC classrooms, electric city vehicles, and how would a potential ban on single-use beverage containers exactly work?
That’s a wrap! See you in two weeks, for the last meeting of the year!
Citizen comment: The two main topics are the Can Ban and HSAB grants.
Can Ban: – A bunch of people speak in favor, many who have spent years cleaning up the river – Can it be a restriction on single-use beverages but not single-use food containers? Texas Water Safari folks need some single-use food containers, – City Council member from Martindale describes how well their can ban has worked. – The Eyes of the San Marcos River does regular clean ups just past where city contractors stop picking up trash. It’s a lot.
Speakers promoting their nonprofits for HSAB Grants: – Outsiders Anonymous representative describes their free addiction recovery program. – PALS for free spay/neutering and low cost pet care
All these things in due time!
…
Item 9: We are rezoning about 1 acre here:
Currently it looks like this:
That is the restaurant Sakura.
Sakura is staying, but it’s gaining a bunch of little apartments behind it. They can put up to 9 apartments there. This seems like a good place for apartments! Infill does not need to be scary.
…
Item 10: There’s a little road you’ve never heard of here:
called Flustern Road. It’s up in Whisper Tract:
Whisper tract is gigantic, and slowly getting built out.
Flustern Road has exactly one resident, a company called Manifest Commerce. They asked if they could get the name changed from Flustern Road to Manifest Way.
However, Flustern Road will eventually cross Opportunity Blvd, and connect with Celebration Way:
From the POV of the fire department and EMS, it’s better to have roads that don’t change names. So as long as we’re changing the name anyway, we’re going to go with Celebration way.
Also, don’t the names all sound like someone from the 1960s was dreaming of a brighter tomorrow? Celebration Way, Opportunity Blvd, Technology Way, Manifest Way… Flustern never really fit in, did it.
Nevertheless: would you like to know what Flustern means? [drum roll] ….it means “to whisper.” And it was in Whisper Tract. Aww, very cute. But over!
…
Item 11: Consolidated CBDG funding report.
All of our CBDG money originates with the Federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) department. We have to regularly write reports to them, documenting that we’re using the money according to the rules.
Alyssa Garza feels like the report isn’t widely circulated enough. Maybe fewer neighbors would harass her about wasting money if they saw how meticulously nonprofits have to account for every last nickel.
I’m more cynical than she is. People just like to gripe.
…
Item 5: We’re buying a generator, for $445K:
Technically, we’re buying a 600-kilowatt diesel generator, automatic transfer switch, electrical installation, and associated engineering services.
Technically, it’s Covid money that’s paying for it.
And technically, it will be located in San Marcos High School, so that the high school can serve as an emergency shelter in the future.
…
Item 12: Citizen Comment will now be called Community Perspectives. (Mentioned before here.)
We’re getting rid of “Citizen” because you do not have to be a citizen to have a comment. This is good!
We didn’t want to name it “Public comment” because we already have “public hearings”, and those might sound too similar.
Not sure why we didn’t go with “Community Comment”. “Community Perspectives” sounds a little bit like a hokey small town newspaper op-ed column, but hey, sometimes we are a hokey small town. Did you have a chance to stop by Sights & Sounds this weekend?
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Item 13: Human Services Advisory Board (HSAB) Grants.
We put $550,000 of our city budget towards grants to nonprofits. This year, we also have $100,000 of the last bit of Covid money to distribute as well. HSAB is the committee that meets, looks over applications, and recommends to council who should get money.
It seems everyone likes the new process! You can read all the applications yourself here, as well as a bunch of other reports and information.
So this year:
34 nonprofits applied.
5 board members rated them independently on a huge matrix of things:
All the nonprofits pass the Risk Assessment
One nonprofit needed to get their nonprofit status back
They were ranked according to some evaluation criteria
Here’s the evaluation criteria:
The committee met weekly, all fall long, and discussed all of the nonprofits individually. They heard presentations from all the nonprofits. It sounds like a massive amount of work.
Here’s the full scoring matrix on the Evaluation Criteria, if you’re so inclined:
Alyssa Garza: Last year, Council deviated from the recommended HSAB funding in a really haphazard way. I’m glad to see a really systematic process. This is good work, I support the recommendations.
Matthew Mendoza: Great job! But I want to tinker with it. Any Baby Can is centered out of Austin. Let’s deduct $7K from them and give it to the San Marcos Youth Services Board, because that’s centered in San Marcos.
Jane Hughson: Any Baby Can has an office here in San Marcos. Make it $5K and I’ll support it.
The Vote: Should we take $5K from Any Baby Can and give it to SMYSB?
Yes: Shane Scott, Mark Gleason, Jane Hughson, Matthew Mendoza No: Alyssa Garza (who explains that she just wants to stick with HSAB process)
Abstain: Jude Prather, because his wife serves on the board of the food bank.
So now: – Any Baby Can requested $30K, recommended $25K, and will get $20,000. – SMYSB requested $39K, was recommended $20K, and will get $25,000.
This is a good example of haphazard meddling. They’re both good organizations!
But let’s take a moment anyway:
Any Baby Can is providing early childhood intervention for birth-3 year olds, for kids with medical diagnoses, developmental delays, or any impairments. (Getting interventions in early is huge. This majorly redirects the trajectory of kids’ lives.) According to their application, they served 159 children and families in San Marcos last year, over 29,600 hours. They expect to serve 165 children in San Marcos this next year.
SMYSB is an afterschool program for 11-17 year olds in San Marcos. They’re asking for rent for their new facilities, which is $2700/month. Their application doesn’t say how many kids they’ve served, but looking at their progress report from last year, SMYSB got $10,000, and served 16 kids in the spring and summer. They used to be located at Southside Community center, so I’m guessing that they’re working with kids dealing with housing instability or homelessness. This is a super vulnerable population! They need this kind of one-on-one care to navigate what they’ve gotten handed to them.
Both are good programs, staffed by hard-working, underfunded organizations! But the committee took their job seriously when they evaluated the benefit to San Marcos.
I guess I’m harping on this because it’s, well, haphazard. It didn’t feel like Matthew Mendoza read all the applications super closely and then felt compelled to shift this money around. It felt like someone from SMYSB picked up the phone and asked him if he couldn’t find a few more dollars for them. He did, but it comes out of someone else’s funding.
The vote on the entire thing: Yes: Everyone but Jude No: No one Abstain: Jude Prather
…
Because I’m an insufferable prig, may I make a comparison?
Just now, we generously gave out HSAB grants which cost the city $550,000.
We also give all homeowners a $15,000 homestead exemption on their property tax.
How much does that cost the city?
Basically, the city is donating of $1,100,000 towards the worthy charity of home owners.
The elderly and disabled people get a tax exemption of $35,000. This works out to a $211 discount on their tax bill.
Everyone else gets a $15,000 tax exemption. This works out to a $90 discount on their tax bill.
This is fine! I’m not mad about this. But it’s invisible. And we don’t call it “charity”, we call it a tax break.
Bear with me for a moment more:
We’ve got about 7000 owner-occupied houses (as of 2021) who get to share that $1.1 million. There’s a tiny bit of paperwork, but that’s it. Each person gets either $211 or $90, no strings attached.
There are 22,219 people below the poverty line (as of 2021). The HSAB money isn’t exclusively for poor people, but it’s a good place to start. That works out to $25 per person.
And there are SO MANY STRINGS attached. Thirty-four nonprofits fill out extensive paperwork. A six person committee meets for weeks and scrutinizes the applications. Council scrutinizes the recommendations further. Afterwards, each nonprofit writes ongoing grant reports on each person they helped. It’s an extremely labor-intensive, highly visible process. Someone has to maintain the website charting all these details.
To recap:
$1,100,000 on charity for 7000 homeowners.
$550,000 on charity for at least 22,000 people in poverty.
Item 14: We’re converting some of City Hall to be ACC classrooms. (Discussed here before.)
This will be where the classrooms go:
I love city staff. But they are crap at selecting useful maps. Like, would it kill you to include Hopkins as a reference point, on a map of City Hall?
Here’s my supplemental map:
[smugly waits for applause. You’re welcome.]
The idea is that ACC will provide workforce training. Some people will get free tuition, but they didn’t give much details about who.
…
Item 15: $2 million dollars on vehicles.
You know how I like to try to find photos of the fire trucks or back hoes that we’re buying. But this was a little vague:
“Consider approval of Resolution 2023-198R, approving an agreement with Enterprise Fleet Management, Inc., through the Texas Interlocal Purchasing System (TIPS), to provide for the lease and maintenance of one hundred and eight (108) vehicles for use by several city departments and the purchase of miscellaneous equipment in the estimated amount of $2,115,083.00; authorizing the City Manager, or her designee, to execute the agreement; and declaring an effective date.”
This is 108 vehicles, across a bunch of departments.
Jane Hughson said, “I hadn’t been on board with this, but I suppose I’ve come around.” But she never said what it is!
Good thing I’ve got mad reading skills. In the packet there’s a link to “Feasibility and Implications of Electric Vehicle (EV) Deployment and Infrastructure Development”. So I guess we’re upgrading a bunch of city vehicles to be electric. That’s good!
…
One day over the summer, I had some friends down from Austin. They needed to charge their electric car while they were in San Marcos.
Let me tell you: it was a royal pain in the ass to find a working charger. We tried the library chargers, we tried some near the town square, and finally ended up at Embassy Suites an hour later.
So maybe increasing the number of electric vehicles in San Marcos will spur investment in some charging stations? That would also be a good thing.
…
Item 16: IPAWS: Integratred Public Alert & Warning System
This is FEMA’s emergency alert system. Hays County is on it. We’re joining in onto their system.
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Item 19: CAN BAN TIME! Or rather, SINGLE USE CONTAINER BAN TIME!
Council discussed a possible can ban back here, or rather a ban on single-use containers, because there’s so much trash in the river.
Limit cooler size to one 30 quart cooler per person.
Council discussion:
First, Jude Prather weighs in: San Marcos should adopt rules that match New Braunfel’s single-use container ban. It’s really important that the central Texas rivers all have uniform policies. (At the beginning, Jude’s position seems totally reasonable. By the end, his uniformity shtick starts to seem a little silly.)
Shane Scott: Can we use the endangered species somehow? Like to get federal protection to regulate containers on the river?
Matthew Mendoza: I was thinking that too! Also we can charge out of town users to use the river.
Alyssa Garza: – The river is big with large working-class Hispanic families. There are not a lot of free ways to get your family together in San Marcos and cool off, in the summer. – Public buy-in is going to be very important. – The equity coordinator needs to be involved in this. The cultural piece needs to be handled well. – I know what la gente will say: “First they came for our charcoal grills, and now the giant coolers?”
A word on the giant coolers, because I also found it odd. This is a 30 quart cooler:
So the proposed rule is that each person can bring in one of those.
Why is it better for a big family to bring four of those, instead of one of these:
?
It did not make sense to me, and we’ll get back to this point. Sit tight.
Jane Hughson: There are a few questions that we need consensus on. 1. Should this be just beverage containers, or also include single-use food containers? 2. Should this be enforced on the river, in the parks, or both?
Let’s take these one at a time.
Should we also ban single-use food containers?
The parks board didn’t want to stomp on birthday parties and the Texas Water Safari, where people are going to bring plastic forks and plates and so on.
Anecdotally, the vast amount of trash is beverage-related
So that’s why they recommended only beverage containers.
Shane Scott: What about vape cartridges? Can we ban those?
Answer: We already ban vaping in the parks, so there’s no good way to make it even MORE not allowed.
Mark Gleason: Could single-use food containers only be allowed on rented pavilions? Maybe with a permit?
Alyssa: Come on, parents are tired. No one wants to do the dishes after a park hang. You all should come down for some carne asadas, though.
Jane: I’m also not on board with restricting single-use food items to permitted uses. That’s just a barrier to many. And the logistics of enforcement would be impossible.
Staff says again that the majority of trash is beverage-related – beer cans, straw wrappers from Capri Suns, etc. So even just ban on single-use beverages alone would reduce a lot of litter from the river.
The consensus seems to be tipping towards just beverage containers.
Should the ban be enforced on the river, or in the parks, or both?
As I mentioned above, there’s legal concerns that the state will override a river ban.
Everyone agrees that without the river, it will be a little futile. So we want to regulate what happens on the river.
Does anyone want it to be just the river? And not the parks?
Jude does! Because of uniformity.
Jude Prather: You know how passionate I am about UNIFORMITY!! New Braunfels only regulates the river and not the park. So we should do that, too. Also, New Braunfels charges $25 per picnic space, and there’s a waiver for residents. UNIFORMITY!!
Jane Hughson: Yes, but they have restricted river access.
Jude’s being silly, and fortunately no one else agrees with him.
Here’s the thing: New Braunfels parks are used very differently from San Marcos parks. In New Braunfels, there are a ton of businesses making money off tubers. (In fact, the business owners were the ones who took it to court to get the ban overturned.) Tubing is more separated from hanging out in the parks. (Honestly, I haven’t spent a ton of time in the New Braunfels parks, but this is my impression.)
Whereas here, it’s much more blurred. There’s the Lion’s Club, but tubing the San Marcos river just doesn’t take very long, unlike the New Braunfels rivers. Large families set up giant day-long picnics, and everyone is in and out of the water to cool off. Lots of people skip tubing altogether.
Regulating big family picnics on the bank of the San Marcos river is very different than regulating the massive tubing industry of New Braunfels.
Which brings us to the coolers issue. What’s wrong with these?
It turns out that New Braunfels bans them, so we’re proposing to ban them, out of UNIFORMITY!! Jude must be so pleased.
The reasons that New Braunfels bans coolers over 30 quarts:
They cause traffic jams of tubers when it’s time to get in and out of the river, because they’re big and awkward.
They capsize sometimes and make a giant mess.
And that’s why uniformity is stupid. We don’t have river traffic jams the way New Braunfels does. And basically no one takes giant coolers like that on the river, because the tube ride isn’t long enough to need it.
Anyone who is tubing and has a cooler that size has some family or friends camped out by the falls who is hanging out with the coolers, the babies, and grilling the food. You just don’t need a giant cooler on the river. In San Marcos, a ban on giant coolers would be nonsensical.
Some final thoughts:
New Braunfels only bans the river and not the parks. We really need to contemplate Alyssa’s point about what it means to ban single-use beverage containers on the river banks, and how a large family spending the day on the river is going to avoid single-use beverages containers. It’s a really big ask for them, much bigger than asking college kids to switch from beer to a hydroflask of spiked Hawaiian Punch.
If I’m planning an all-day picnic for a big family, without using single-use beverages…I guess one of those giant Gatorade dispenser things with water or juice for kids? It means keeping track of a bunch of water bottles, though, because you can’t use dixie cups. But the adults are presumably going to want a beer at some point, and I’m not sure how that part works. A little party ball keg? Into what kind of cup? You’re not bringing Solo cups.
It’s just tricky to ask people to incorporate a lot of changes into their life.
But at the same time:
(photo by Christopher Paul Cardoza, taken from here)
You can’t destroy your only river. There are not infinite resources. Anyone who wants to use the river needs to do their part not to destroy it.
Finally: everyone wants to collaborate with Texas State on this, and get Sewell Park operating under the same rules. We have no power over Texas State, so it can only happen by building relationships and goodwill.
Here’s what happens from here:
Council is going to have a workshop in January, to hammer out some details, and the legality of regulating what happens in the river.
Council passes a policy
Staff figures out funding and enforcement
Finally, implementation, hopefully by summer 2024.
The San Marxist 