Citizen Comment period:
People spoke on:
- the proposed student housing on Lindsey street (much, much more to come)
- San Marcos Civics Club, inviting Councilmembers to drop in.
- In favor of turning the Mitchell Center into an African-American History museum, overseen by the Calaboose board. (This is an item on the Executive Session agenda, so I don’t have any other info on it.)
- Five people spoke in favor of a council resolution calling for ceasefire in Gaza. (Discussed a bit last time.)
Items 1-3: Financial reports. All about Q3 2023, which is last June-September.
How did last summer go?
We came in under-budget and over-revenue. Great.
They also went through the special funds: Electric, Water/Wastewater, Stormwater, Resource Recovery, Airport, and Hotel Tax. It all seemed like normal fluctuations to me, but knock yourself out if you’re curious to know more.
The auditors gave us a clean bill of health for 2023. You’re welcome to read that, too.
…
Item 16: We’re knee-deep in next year’s budget. I haven’t watched ANY of the budget planning sessions, because they’re dull as rocks, and I say this as someone who finds council meetings riveting.
I think this is the key part of the Budget Policy Statement:
What does “Eviction Services” mean? We’re helping the tenant and not the landlord, right? We’re not the baddies, are we?
In part A, “Mental Health Diversion” sounds promising. None of this got any discussion at Tuesday’s meeting, though.
I’m not sure what distinguishes As, Bs, and Cs. Funding level? Different departments? Urgency?
…
Item 17: The city bought Quail Creek back in 2022.
We bought it, but it wasn’t inside city limits. So now we’re annexing it.
Google maps tells me that it looks like this:
Nothing I enjoy better than the derelict remains of former wealth, as it returns to the common good!
….
Item 18: LIHTC projects are low income housing complexes, where the developer gets some tax breaks in exchange for building affordable housing. (We talked about LIHTC projects last month.)
These guys want to build affordable housing right behind the high school:
Great!
How affordable is “affordable”?
What this means is that there are 348 apartments, and all of them will be priced so that they are affordable for people making $58,401 – $70,080.
What does “51-60% AMI” mean?
AMI stands for “Area Median Income”. In other words, the AMI is the middle income in the town. So then “51-61% of AMI” means these apartments are for people earning roughly half of the middle income, or a little more. On the poor side of the AMI though, for sure.
Hopefully you’re thinking, “Wait, what? How is $58K-$70K on the poor side, for San Marcos!?”
It’s not! Here’s where the hocus-pocus comes in. San Marcos is part of the Greater Austin-Round Rock Metro statistical area. The median income for a family of four in Austin is $122K. And therefore 51-60% of that gives you $58,401 – $70,080.
Now! What about down in San Marcos? Well, our median income is $47,394. In San Marcos, 50-61% of $47,394 would be $24,170-$28,436.
People earning $58K-$70K in San Marcos are above the median income. These households are on the richer half of San Marcos. Not actually rich, but relatively well off for San Marcos. It’s completely absurd to call this apartment complex “affordable” or “low-income”. These are regular, market rate apartments for regular, old San Martians.
But here’s the thing: they’re not applying for tax breaks from the city. They’re only applying to state tax breaks. So this isn’t costing the city anything.
Still, they’re getting tax breaks from the state. Are they at least providing services that go above and beyond?
Eh, not really. Pretty bog-standard.
City Council is happy with this because we’re not giving away any money. So they give it a thumb’s up.
Look, as far as San Marcos goes, this is fine. It’s housing.
But they’re still jerks! They’re diverting funding that would otherwise subsidize actual low-income housing. They’re getting a subsidy, without helping the people it’s supposed to help. It’s not technically illegal – we’re within the Austin MSA, so officially our median income is $122k. Just kinda shitty of them.
The San Marxist 