Citizen Comment:
People talked about:
- 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. 🙁
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Item 3: Parking fees come up one last time.
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!
The San Marxist 
The single family neighborhoods or developments are mostly going into the ETJ and beyond. That is the “sprawl” that people complain about. Who is responsible? Can in-city initiatives promote availability and affordability? If we look at the role of the investor, they are interested in their big buck payoff and getting their projects approved ASAP, hook or crook. On the otherside, we have City Managers who live for tax base as their mantram and are the highest paid City employee with performance ever on their minds. Approving ETJ development is mandated, but annexing is really the tax base payoff. So our Planning & Development recite ” Staff Approves” 99% of the time, out of town investors/developers win, City Management win, and Planning & Development win. It’s a win, win, win kinda deal, but who is truly representing San Marcos community? City Council? Does Staff really implement the “vision” of San Marcos community or are they inserting top down textbook concepts that aren’t necessarily community building?
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That is definitely the sprawl that makes me most frustrated – these far-flung homogenous single-family neighborhoods in the ETJ. Usually there’s a development agreement in place, so we would be perfectly able to demand mixed-income housing. We sort of do – Trace, Whisper, La Cima all have apartment complexes, but they’re very clearly segregated off from the “nice” parts, which drives me crazy. I think staff works really hard to stay neutral and just bring decisions to council and P&Z, and that the current P&Z and council is just fine with sprawl. The route to change, in my opinion, is electing councilmembers who take this stuff seriously.
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