This week at City Council: it’s Buc-ee’s time! Should we accept them on their terms? And also the can ban makes it across the finish line.
Let’s do this:
Hours 0:00 – 1:00: In which we discuss Area Plans for Dunbar and the Historic District, and the River View apartments in Blanco Gardens.
Hours 1:00 – 1:57: It’s Buc-ee’s time! Should we accept them on their terms? And also the can ban makes it across the finish line.
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: Someday, there will be a new city hall. Where shall we put it?
(I learned this week, over and over, that Buccees is actually spelled Buc-ees. Every time I see it with the hyphen, it looks weird and awkward, but here we are.)
Almost everyone speaking was local small business owners who are salty about Buc-ee’s asking for a $3.2 million rebate. They observe that, collectively, they create a lot of jobs, and yet none of them have been offered a proportional rebate.
I can understand their frustration! Much to discuss. Stay tuned.
Item 1: The Dunbar and Heritage District Area Plan
You’ve heard about VisionSMTX literally for years. (Discussed here, here, here, here, here, and here.) We’re neck-deep in getting it approved.
There’s a side-hustle to VisionSMTX, which are the Area Plans. What this means is that a neighborhood get to decide what makes it special, and then enshrine that special magic spark into the city code. This can be done well – “preserve these historical structures! More sidewalks!” – or it can be done poorly – “Create obstacles that keep poor people out! Micromanage everyone’s business!”
The first Area Plan is up! Here’s the boundary:
It’s a combined region that’s supposed to cover both the Historic District and the Dunbar neighborhood.
At P&Z, they recommended two big changes:
Split Dunbar and the Historic District into two separate Area Plans
Hold off until the Comp Plan is approved.
Splitting the two neighborhoods is a very good idea, given the historical legacy: one of these neighborhoods traditionally got all the resources, and the other was generally short-changed. Making Dunbar the focus of its own plan seems healthy to me.
Council is also on board with both of these changes. So these new split Area Plans will now go back to the residents for revising.
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Item 15: LIHTC Housing
LIHTC stands for Low Income Housing Tax Credits. Apartment complexes can apply for tax breaks if they provide low-income housing and access to social services.
Usually these are new complexes being built. But this time, it’s an existing complex:
These are the River View apartments, in Blanco Gardens.
One note: River View apartments is directly across from the stupid Woods apartments, which is now called Redpoint, as though they can escape my anger by changing their name.
Presumably “River View Apartments” was so named, because it used to have a view of the river, before The Woods was built, and they should probably rename themselves “Apartment View Apartments” now. But that would be too grim.
Anyway: there’s 54 units, of which 40 are Section 8 housing. They were bought by a new owner two years ago who wants to use LIHTC funding to renovate them.
Council asks good questions!
Mayor Hughson: Will anyone be displaced by the renovations? Answer: Temporarily, yes, but no one will lose their housing. We’ll cover moving costs to a different unit or to a hotel during renovations. This is a HUD requirement.
Mark Gleason: Why is it so vacant right now? Answer: It’s 30% vacant, because the units were in such bad shape that we weren’t allowed to rent them until we fixed them up. We’re about to get approval from HUD to start renting them.
Saul Gonzales: Are there enough washers and dryers? And are they priced affordably? Answer: We’re required to have 1 set per 10 apartments, and we’ve got 6 sets, so we’re good. On the pricing, we’ll blandly demur.
Alyssa Garza: Are the wraparound services old or new? What mechanism do you have to make sure you’re not just going to under-advertise and phase out services due to low participation? Answer: They’re new. HUD requires us to replace services that we phase out.
Council isn’t spending any money here. They’re just voting on whether to support the owner’s LIHTC application to the state. It’s basically just a vote of confidence.
Item 17: you may have heard of this gasoline station?
They want to come to San Marcos.
Specifically, here:
Even more specifically here:
It’s going to have all your Buc-ees features that you know you love:
120 gas pumps, some electric vehicle charging stations, massive travel center, endless Buc-ees themed gear, etc. You know the drill.
There’s going to be some extra roads:
This is a good location. It’s not in any floodplain, it’s not over the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone, nor any other sort of environmentally sensitive zone. It’s good for traffic, too, because there are off-ramps and on-ramps right there. Southbound I-35 traffic can get in and out, without having to wait at any traffic lights.
…
So now the bargaining begins. What can they offer us? What can we offer them?
They’re offering a minimum of 175 stable jobs:
Just to be clear, $18/hour puts you at $36K per year. That is above the federal poverty rate for a family of four, but it does not exactly leave you any breathing room. It’s a hell of a lot better than our $7.25/hour joke of a minimum wage, though.
The benefits are meaningful – health care, 401K with matching contributions, 3 weeks paid vacation. They’re not doing the asshole move of scheduling everyone for 35 hours/week in order to avoid having to pay for healthcare.
Environmentally, they’re offering to install an oil-water separator to handle the runoff from the fueling area.
Virginia Parker, the director of the San Marcos River Foundation, had a recommendation: include a clause in the contract to require regular maintenance inspections of the oil-water separator on a regular basis.
Take her advice, Council!! Systems need maintenance! Don’t just let things degrade over the next 50 years.
(Council ignored this.)
So what do they want from us?
Background: businesses pay both property taxes and sales tax. – Property tax rate: 0.063 cents per $100 appraised. – Sales tax rate: 1.5 cents per dollar.
The deal is that Buc-ees would pay all of their property taxes, but only half the sales tax, for 15 years.
Here’s what the fiscal analysis predicts:
So we stand to bring in a lot, but we’re also giving a lot away.
Let’s just do some quick back-of-the-envelope math. If Buc-ees expects to pay $188K in sales tax in the first year, that means they’re expecting to bring in over $25 million in sales, from this one store, that first year. Over the whole 15 years, we’re rebating them $3.2 million. That implies they’re expecting to earn $426.7 million in sales, at this location alone.
Bottom line: Sure, it’s in our best interest to give up this $188K so that we can get the bigger revenue. But they’re not struggling to keep the lights on. This isn’t a feel-good grant to a struggling mom-and-pop shop.
One other note:
This is not in SMCISD. Your local schools won’t see that money. Is Hays ISD a perfectly nice place? Sure. But it’s vast and stretches up to Austin, and it’s mostly not San Marcos, which is what this Council represents. Probably 98% of the kids in San Marcos are zoned for SMCISD.
One more interesting detail: The EDSM board is the Economic Development of San Marcos Board. They took a look at this project at the end of last year, and they recommended a 10 year rebate. But then it got changed to a 15 year rebate. Why?
Shane Scott asks this very question, later on: Why was 10 years not okay? The Buc-ee’s rep says: This is our standard Chapter 380 agreement! If you want 10 years, we need a bigger rebate. Or if you want 20 years, we’d take a smaller rebate. You’re getting the standard package!
Saul asks: Would you stay if it was 10 years at 50%? Answer: Yeah, no. We’d walk.
Mmhmm.
Saul asks: What about part-time employees? Answer: We pride ourselves on having a maximal number of fulltime employees.
Saul: Is your customer base going to be local people or I-35 traffic? Answer: We think it will be 80% out-of-towners. Our business model is that we’re a road trip stop. Shouldn’t affect local convenience stores or gas stations.
Matthew Mendoza asks about trash and recycling. Answer: We are aggressive recyclers! We do as much as we can!
Matthew also asks if this is actually a truck stop? Answer: Nope! No 18-wheelers except for the ones delivering things to the store.
Alyssa asks about benefits for employees? Answer: 3 weeks vacation, health care after 60 days, and a 401K with 100% match up to 6%.
Those are all reasonable.
Jane Hughson asks one of the city staff to talk about programs for local small businesses, and he rattles off a dozen small programs. You can get coaching, you can get grants to replace your awning, you can get a grant if you want to do something environmentally friendly, that kind of thing. (That is the extent to which City Council heard and placated the citizen comment complaints.)
Jude Prather is super stoked. This sends a message that San Marcos is OPEN FOR BUSINESS!
Mark Gleason praises the choice of location for traffic and environmental reasons, which is fair. He says he’s a little uneasy about the 15 years, and wouldn’t have agreed to it if they also were getting property taxes back. Also fair. He compliments them on their fair employment practices and reiterates Jude’s OPEN FOR BUSINESS line.
The vote:
This will come back around next time for a final vote.
I know I sound a little grumpy here. I’m not saying Buc-ee’s is a bad corporation. They seem like nice people. They seem like they make an effort to treat their employees well and do more than the bare minimum for the environment.
Here’s what I’m saying: In Texas, we allow corporations to get away with staggeringly awful behavior. So when a company comes along and doesn’t treat their hourly employees like utter dog shit, we fall all over ourselves with shock and awe. What heroes! They pay $36K a year! You can go to a doctor and take a vacation!
Excuse me while I sidle away from the wankfest? Thank you for clearing this extremely low bar of decency?
Bottom line: do I think we should we take this deal with Buc-ees?
Eh, yes. I do. I’d vote for in favor, if it were up to me.
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Item 5: THE CAN BAN!
This is the final vote. We’ve been over the go-zones and no-zones, the issue with the coolers, and everything else. (Here, here, here, and here.)
Alyssa Garza mentions again that she’s opposed to the ban on big coolers on the river. I too think it’s silly, but the “go-zones” ended up being so big that there’s plenty of space for big coolers to hang out.
Everyone is very gracious and appreciative of staff, and very excited to get this done.
THE VOTE:
There was an actual burst of applause in the chambers. Everyone’s super stoked.
At 3 pm, there was a workshop on the future city hall. We’ve discussed this before, back in 2022.
Basically, we can’t afford a new city hall, and Texas has a law that you can’t take out a bond to pay for a city hall. [Edit! I got that wrong. The law is that you have to get voter approval for a bond. City staff and city council don’t think that San Marcos voters would approve a bond for a city hall. Correction based on the 2022 presentation here.]
So they’re left with public-private partnerships, where some private entity goes in halvsies with you. You end up building something with both government and commercial appeal. Bleagh, but here we are.
The first decision is location.
This is the leading contender on location:
ie, across the street from the current city hall.
This is supposed to be a mock-up of what City Hall would look like if it were in that spot:
You’re looking at Hopkins. The old location is the lower right, and that would be converted to commercial and residential. Across Hopkins is the new City Hall, next to the retention pond. You can see the Bobcat baseball stadium in the background.
So that’s possible location #1.
Possible location #2 is where the current city hall is located, on the south side of Hopkins.
Nobody says what’s wrong with the southern side of Hopkins. What they say is, “If City Hall is on the northern side of Hopkins, it will welcome everybody coming from I-35! It will form a Civic Road of City Hall, the library, and the Activity Center.”
I guess the southern side is less welcoming because of how Hopkins bends? You’d think a big, snazzy, new building would feel big and snazzy on either side of the road, but I guess it’ll feel extra big and snazzy on the northern side.
Possible location #3 is somewhere downtown. The appeal of this is to bring back some daytime workers back to downtown. When Hays County Courthouse moved out to Wonderworld, the downtown lost a ton of people who would eat lunch at the restaurants and keep the downtown bustling during the day. It would be hard to pull off, though – we only own a tiny bit of land, and it would be pricey to acquire more.
….
Laurie Moyer is one of the assistant city managers, and she gave an extremely charming presentation about her Christmas vacation, which was spent driving all over Texas, observing the City Halls in comparable cities.
For example:
and then, her personal photo:
I was delighted by the whole thing. You should watch it here, if this is also your brand of nerdiness.
Bottom line: All these cities had city halls built in the past 20 years, and ours is 50 years old. The whole process will move extremely slowly, but we’re going to hire a consultant and get the ball rolling.
Hours 0:00 – 1:30: A new gas station, and the can ban moves closer to the finish line.
Hours 1:30 – 2:50: Bringing PDDs back! And some emergency sirens, and P&Z re-appointments.
I just want to note: lately no one talks besides Mayor Hughson. Jane takes her job super seriously. She reads everything carefully and offers up improvements. But no one else ever has any amendments to anything, nor much discussion to Jane’s amendments.
I think there’s a number of reasons: - General indifference to details. (Saul, Shane, Jude) – Thinking it’s futile. (Alyssa, being the only progressive) – Sincerely agreeing with everything Jane says (Mark Gleason and Matthew Mendoza) – Having a full time job on top of council is too much (Probably all of them)
But even if the reasons are sympathetic, it’s not great. If you watch a P&Z meeting, everyone seems prepared to ask good questions and weigh the decisions carefully. If you watch a city council meeting, there is barely any discussion of ideas or improvements to policies. It feels like things get rubber-stamped without scrutiny. It’s not great.
We just picked land for the fire station that is supposed to cover the SMART Terminal land. Why did we go with the only choice that is outside San Marcos ETJ, and in the Martindale ETJ?
Hooray for can ban
Hooray for the can ban, but take a closer look at the No Zones and Go Zones please. On a windy day, all that trash is going to blow from the Go Zones into the No Zones.
Hooray for bringing back PDDs. Consider charging fees to cover staff time.
I’m also surprised that we’re moving forward with the fire station, although I guess you want to pick out land long before anything gets built. There have not been any public updates on the SMART/Axis Terminal since last summer.
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Items 3-5: This little triangle at the corner of East McCarty and Rattler Road:
was annexed and zoned.
The plan is for it to be a gas station with car wash along the part facing McCarty, and then a strip mall along the back part that opens onto Rattler Road. The developer is hoping for things like restaurants, medical offices, some commerce, etc.
There’s a larger context:
this whole dead spot between the high school and the city is supposed to someday turn into a thriving East Village city center. (According to the Area Plans, which are in progress. This is supposed to accompany VisionSMTX.)
Point being: this is a good spot for a gas station and some commerce. You have my blessing, Young Developer.
No one really has any questions, and the vote is 6-0. (Mark Gleason is absent for this part.)
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Item 6: Here comes your can ban!
So first, here are the Riverfront Parks that we’re talking about:
The plan is to carve out “No Zones” and “Go Zones”.
In a No Zone: – Only reusable beverage containers – Only coolers under 30 qts in size – No containers under 5 oz, which is a little redundant, but we’re just doubling down on jello shots and mini-liquor bottles.
In a Go Zone: – Go nuts. Have all the single-use beverage containers and giant coolers you want. – Still no glass or alcohol or charcoal grills, but that’s not new.
So what are the boundaries?
It’s fuzzy! I thought there’d be a big conversation about it, but nope. None of the councilmembers had anything to say about these boundaries.
Here’s what was provided:
There are some trails to the right of Ramon Lucio park, in the map above. Those would all be No Zones, because there are so many river access points throughout.
Loosely speaking, it sounds like the big trails along the river will be the boundary of the No Zones. If you’re beyond the trails, you can pop that tab. If you’re closer to the river, you can’t.
My 2 cents? This is probably as good a starting point as any. It allows for plenty of big family picnics. The paths are already a big, visible feature, so it makes sense to use them as a boundary.
If we do a great job with the signs and communicate this boundary loud and clear, it’ll probably work. If we half-ass it, it’ll take a lot more effort to get people to change their behavior.
More details: – It’ll kick in on May 1st – The first year will be focused on education. Citations, etc won’t really kick in hard until 2025.
At the January workshop, there was a lot of conversation about hiring more staffing. Specifically, are we going to hire city marshals (who dress like cops), or will we hire park rangers (who dress like park rangers)? Nobody discussed this on Tuesday. So it’s still an open question.
Jane Hughson had a few questions, but they were extremely detail oriented – definition of banks of the river, clarity of exemptions for people cleaning up the river, that kind of thing.
The vote:
YAY for the can ban: everyone Screw the river: no one.
This was a first vote, so it will come back around next meeting. But most likely, it’ll be here this summer!
This might feel a bit like insider baseball, but it’s insider baseball that makes me happy.
Here’s the issue: say a developer applies to get their land zoned. The developer says, “You’re gonna love it! I’m going to put in some cute condos, a great restaurant, and some retail.” They show us some charming sketches of what they have planned. We think it looks great and give them the zoning they want.
Then they change their mind and sell it. The new owner gets the zoning, but decides that they really want to build something that pisses everyone off. As long as the new plan is legal under the zoning, there’s no mechanism to stop them.
(To be fair, Council and P&Z know not to trust charming sketches. But in general, there are a lot of hard calls on zoning when you’re okay with some uses and not others.)
Enter PDDs. PDD stands for Planned Development District. This means you get to micromanage the developer. You get to see the actual plans and say, “A few more trees over there, how about an awning on this little store, etc.” You can be extremely heavy-handed and rigid. Everybody signs the PDD contract and the city gets exactly what it signs up for.
There are bad parts, too: it’s an enormous amount of work for city staff. Sometimes it has meant sweetheart deals for developers who don’t feel like following the code. Sometimes PDDs haven’t been enforced. PDDs are only as good as the council that approves them.
Here’s the frustrating thing: we used to have PDDs, but in 2018, we threw them out! I never understood this. Why not just use them less? You’re allowed to have tools that you don’t use very often. But no: we went Marie Kondo on our tool set and completely cut them out. (There are plenty of PDDs that are still around – Trace, La Cima, etc, but we eliminated our ability to write new ones.)
Since then, there’ve been a number of occasions when it would have been nice to have them! The most obvious example is the SMART Terminal. We were on the verge of handing over 2000 acres and saying, “Have fun with all that! Let us know what you decide to do with all that heavy industrial zoning!!” Only for massive public activism did we back away at the 11th hour.
So now we’re bringing PDDs back!
Jane Hughson’s main motivation is to hold developers’ feet to the fire. If they promise beautiful things, then they can put it in writing and be held accountable. I agree – that’s a great reason to have PDDs.
Everyone else is on board. What’s not to love about micromanaging developers?
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Item 8: Emergency Sirens
There are emergency sirens throughout town. We occasionally have emergencies – floods, tornados, snow-vid, etc. (Now, I can’t recall ever actually hearing them during different emergencies we’ve had? but surely they did their job.)
If we’re going to have massive sprawl, maybe the developers should include sirens in their new developments. Everyone agrees this sounds reasonable.
Shane Scott asks about GMRS systems? Apparently these are fancy walkie-talkies, somewhere in between CBs and ham radios, in terms of watts of power.
Answer: they require really tall towers, so they wouldn’t piggyback on the siren towers. But maybe someday!
10-4, good buddy.
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Item 9: Boards and Commissions appointments.
There are 19 different city boards and commissions with open slots. It’s appointment time.
Last year, Alyssa Garza was super frustrated by the perpetual Oldness and Whiteness of the applicant pool. It was never shared with the public if anything came of that? Maybe the DEI coordinator worked with the communications outreach team to get the word out more effectively?
Jane Hughson applauded this applicant pool for being the most diverse yet. Maybe it is! I have no idea. Alyssa did not say anything good or bad either way about it.
On P&Z, there were three open slots. All three current members – Lupe Costilla, Jim Garber, and William Agnew – were re-appointed for a second term. Jane Hughson, Saul Gonzalez, Mark Gleason, and Matthew Mendoza voted for those three reappointments. Jude Prather, Shane Scott, and Alyssa Garza all voted for some new and some returning people.
All three of those P&Z members work hard and in good faith. I’m totally annoyed with how P&Z handled VisionSMTX, but that’s just one part of many things they do, and they do other things well. (New appointments keep it fresh and interesting, though.)
One last thought: I recognized so many of the names from people who are friends with me on social media! You’re good people. Everyone who submits an application to be on these commissions deserves a hearty thank you.
This week, we’re giving $800K to repair homes, we’re writing new rules for short-term rentals, and I’ve got your cheat sheet for the VisionSMTX survey. Get it all while it’s piping hot!
Hours 0:00-0:54: EV Parking Space fines, and allocating $800K of ARPA money to Mission Able and Operation Triage. It was a mini-meeting.
Double Bonus! Cheat Sheet: My recommendations for the VisionSMTX survey. Take whatever suits your fancy!
The meeting was extremely short, but that survey cheat sheet took me forever to write up. Please feel free to share it far and wide.
Finally, next week is another Council Meeting. These are the back-to-back meetings they scheduled last December. So I will see you right back here, same time next week. Bye for now!
Mission Able, a nonprofit that offers home repairs for low-income residents of San Marcos
Being opposed to the potential Lindsey Street high rise
How some people online are blaming the historic district and unprotected neighborhoods for sprawl. Watch out for AI. It’s not rich vs. poor, it’s protected neighborhoods vs. unprotected neighborhoods.
Obviously that last comment is catnip to me! I’m so excited to take it apart.
“People online are blaming the historic district and unprotected neighborhoods for sprawl.”
I hope the speaker doesn’t mean me! I don’t blame the historic district for sprawl. I blame the neighborhoods that aren’t like the historic district. I want all single-family neighborhoods to have the interesting housing options that the historic district has, like ADUs, and 3- and 4-plexes.
I blame neighborhoods that are uniformly single-family homes for sprawl.
“Watch out for AI.”
I think this means for the VisionSMTX survey – the speaker doesn’t want someone programming a bot to bombard the survey with 2000 responses against her.
I also don’t want that! However, I’m publishing a cheat sheet, in case any people out there want a shortcut to sharing their opinions. But listen: I only want people. No bots.
“It’s not rich vs. poor, it’s protected neighborhoods vs. unprotected neighborhoods.”
I have definitely phrased the VisionSMTX fight as “haves vs. the have-nots”, which amounts to the same thing as rich v poor. So my ears perked up.
What does “protected neighborhoods vs. unprotected neighborhoods” mean? My best guest is that the speaker is referring to HOAs. I think they are saying that HOA neighborhoods are protected and non-HOA neighborhoods are unprotected.
As luck would have it, I’ve been thinking a lot about HOAs as well! They’re fucking wild. There’s a kernel of truth to what the speaker is saying. HOAs can ban things – like ADUs – even if the city says they’re allowed everywhere.
However, I don’t want to extend HOA protections to non-HOA neighborhoods. I’d rather level the playing field by de-fanging the HOAs. HOAs operate under the pretense that nothing they do affects anyone outside the neighborhood. But when it comes to collective action problems like sprawl and density, opting out of the solution does affect others. And so it should be banned.
Will we take bold action on HOAs? Ha. ha. No. Sorry.
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Usually I don’t mention the Consent Agenda, because it’s a formality. But it’s important this time, because:
CLICKERS ARE BACK!
But just for that one vote! Then they stopped working. 🙁
Mayor Hughson has an amendment: it will be a $50 fine if you park a non-EV vehicle in an EV spot. Seems reasonable. The amendment passes 7-0.
The vote on all the parking updates: 6-1.
Alyssa Garza was a “no”, but didn’t say why. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Item 5: Taking $800K of ARPA money and giving it to Mission Able and Operation Triage.
ARPA money is Covid money, and it has to be fully spent soon. So we’re giving $400K to Mission Able, and $400K to Operation Triage.
Mission Able is these guys. They come in and repair people’s homes. For various reasons, they can make the application process much less painful than the CBDG application process.
Operation Triage is these guys. They do something similar, except they focus on veterans.
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Item 6: We’re also shuffling around CBDG money. It’s not a surprise – it’s a continuation of this plan for flood mitigation.
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That was literally the whole meeting. It was surreal!
We are updating our rules about AirBnB type places. We used to require that they be:
Permitted in some places, but not others.
Owner-occupied (where a permit was required)
Parties were prohibited
Somehow in Executive Session, they decided that “owner-occupied” was no longer okay, so we’re trying to find workarounds. Also, a court ruled that you can’t prohibit parties.
So now:
All STRs would need a permit.
Owners can only have one STR.
Only one STR on a block, or at least 600 ft apart.
Short-term tenants can have parties, but not excessively noisy ones, just like any other resident.
Everyone who lives within 400’ gets a postcard with a hotline number to call if you’re having any trouble.
So on that last point, we’re paying Granicus to be a hotline for us. They’ll do a bunch of things:
Watch the websites for any unregistered STRs.
Staff the hotline, 24/7.
If you call the hotline, they’ll track down the contact person for the STR and tell them there’s a problem. If they can’t get ahold of the contact person, they’ll reach out to SMPD.
They’ll keep a running list of which properties are having recurring problems.
If an owner keeps renting to people that cause problems, the owner can have their license suspended or revoked.
This hotline will get paid for out of STR permit fees.
So there you have it. Staff will write all this up, and it will come before council in a regular meeting at some point.
The San Marxist 