Hours 1:44 – 3:40, 3/19/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 19:  Last time, we dove into the P&Z meeting where they discussed this:

The developer wants to put student housing there. (The developer is Shannon Mattingly, former head of the San Marcos Planning Department, which is pretty shady, yes. She was hired by The Dremer Group out of Austin about two years ago.)

There were actually four decision points at the P&Z meeting:

  1.  Should downtown include that pentagon on the left?  (No.)
  2. Should the mishmash of different zonings all be consolidated to a single zoning?  (Somewhat.)
  3. Should they be allowed to have Purpose Built Student Housing? And is this the same as Rent by the Bedroom?  (Yes.)
  4. Should they be allowed to go to 7 stories?  (No.)

This week, council tackled the first question. The rest of the questions are being saved for next time.

So today, we’re only talking about the yellow, striped pentagon:

Basically, if you start at Zelicks, and walk uphill past North Street, and keep going until you hit the university, we’re talking about the houses on the left when you reach Texas State.

I believe it’s these houses:

One of them burned down maybe five years ago. One of them was transplanted from Riviera Street about ten years ago. Two are bungalows from the 1920s, and one of them is considered a High Priority Historical Resource from around 1900.

This one is the high priority one:

It is very cute!

First off, Jude Prather recuses himself because his wife works for the university, in a building close to this spot.  This is probably a reasonable recusal, but it affects the vote calculation coming up.

Second: today is just discussion. No vote until next time.

So: should downtown include that yellow, striped pentagon to the left?

If Council says yes, then they can apply for a zoning (CD-5D) that lets them build up to 5 stories and have 100% impervious cover.

If Council says no, then the developer might back out, and not buy the property. (Or they could build whatever they’re allowed to under the current zoning, which does allow apartment complexes.)

Public Hearing:

Against: Four speakers.

Similar to the P&Z meeting, they were concerned about student housing, expanding downtown to encroach on neighborhoods, and the preservation of historical buildings.

In favor: 10 speakers.

Some of these speakers made sense to me – the current owner, the developers, etc.

But a bunch were totally ludicrous. Lots of students spoke about how passionate they were about this housing complex. “Simple laws of supply and demand!” they kept saying, as if they’d all been given the same script. One collected 1200 signatures of students who are also super passionate. One of the hardcore Historical Preservation Committee people, who would usually spit on this sort of thing, instead turned up and openly raved about only having heart-eyes for this project.

I mean… come on. The developer must have paid students $15/hour to all read from a script.  “We students are just madly in love with the application of supply and demand curves to the inelasticity of housing supply near campus! Please, ya gotta approve this Preferred Scenario Amendment, mister! For the kids!” Come again?

…

The developer is offering some new concessions, since the P&Z meeting.  For the left hand yellow-striped pentagon:

  • they’ll cap at 4 stories now,
  • only have 1, 2, and 3 bedroom units, 
  • no Rent by the Bedroom leases,
  • limit impervious cover to 80% instead of 100%. 
  • Have the cute old historic houses relocated elsewhere, instead of demolishing them.

Would that sweeten the pot? 

Matthew Mendoza kicks things off: he talked to constituents in traditionally Latino neighborhoods. They all say, “Keep students away from me. Why aren’t the students by campus? Why aren’t students staying on their side of town?”   

He went over to the proposed neighborhood. The whole character of the neighborhood is university.  This makes sense. Alyssa Garza agrees with him.

Saul Gonzales goes next: 

I see it just a little bit different. I’ve lived here almost 62 years, and I saw the town when I was on P&Z many years back. It was only a few bars, and that’s all we were going to have.  And before you knew it, it spread and it spread and it spread. Now there’s no stopping it.  It’s too late.

With a property like this, I see the same thing.  Where does this stop? This is still a neighborhood, as far as I can see it. People that I talked to tell me, “Saul, what happened to downtown? What happened? Look at all these apartments. Look at this, look at that.” And I’m going to tell them this time “well, we just put another one up.”

I’m just not in favor of it. There’s other reasons – the flooding, the parking, and I just don’t think… It has to stop. I’ll be voting against it, just because it has to start with me voting no.” 

Saul, my good man, what the utter fuck are you talking about.  Are you really trying to tell me that in your adult lifetime, San Marcos didn’t used to have a lot of bars? In the 1980s, this was a sedate little sober town?  Dude, this town has been soaked to the gills since Prohibition.  That is some wishful thinking.

More earnestly: Saul is making a slippery slope argument.  He’s saying he doesn’t mind any one particular development, but over time, the neighborhood will hit a tipping point where it starts to feel like a university student housing neighborhood, instead of a traditional neighborhood of houses.

The problem is that this ship has sailed. This neighborhood is already university housing.

Literally, the university owns Sanctuary Lofts and the Vistas apartments now. Everything north of Lindsey street is campus.

Let’s pause to count the votes:

 P&Z denied this motion.  This means that council must have 6 votes to overturn P&Z.  Since Jude recused himself, that means it has to be unanimous to override the P&Z denial. 

If Saul really is a hard NO, then this whole item is sunk.

(The actual vote is not until next meeting. Today is just discussion.)

Back to Council discussion:

Mark Gleason talks next: I take each case individually. I haven’t made up my mind.  But the bright line between downtown and the neighborhoods is not North Street. That’s absurd. C’mon, you all know that I will fight for the neighborhoods. This isn’t that.  Clearly Moore Street is the bright line.   I will need restrictive covenants to enforce the offer that the developer made, and I haven’t totally made up my mind, but I’m here for it.

Mark Gleason is making the most sense.  He’s entirely right. 

Jane Hughson asks about the flooding? 

Answer: the reason there’s flooding in this area is that it’s coming down from Texas State in waves. This property would have to follow city code, which says you can’t make flooding worse. But you can’t fix flooding from Texas State with this project.

Jane: North Street is a bright line for downtown, for me.  But maybe a lesser zoning?

Quick lesson: all the zonings have confusing names. CD-5D, CD-5, CD-4, ND-4, and many more.

As far as I tell, all anyone cares about (in this situation) is the number of stories and the percent impervious cover. Loosely speaking, the choices are:

  1. Up to 5 stories and 100% impervious cover (CD-5D or CD-5)
  2. Up to 3 stories and 80% impervious cover. (CD-4 or ND-4)

The developer is asking for the Option 1, and offering to only build 4 stories at 80% impervious cover. It sounds like Jane is going to try to build a coalition to get them Option 2 under a lesser zoning.

Maybe Saul will go for that! Maybe the developer won’t! Exciting times.

There’s no vote this time – it’s just discussion. Stay tuned!

….

Item 15:  American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money is coming to an end. The first deadline is the end of 2024: you have to have contracted out all your money by the end of 2024, and it must be spent by the end of 2026.

San Marcos put $900K from ARPA money for homelessness initiatives. We then hired Robert Marbut to tell us how to proceed. We discussed it here, and I was not a fan of him.

(It’s not just me:

In 2019, journalists just could not stop writing bad articles about this guy.)

After the study, $800K was left to actually carry out Marbut’s plan. You can read his San Marcos study here. It’s loosely stated enough that it has wiggle room – it all depends on whether it gets implemented humanely or not. The council homelessness committee determined that Southside is the best organization to implement Marbut’s plan.

Southside wants to use $50K of the $800K to hire two part-time people to write the implementation plan. One of them worked under Dr. Marbut before. Southside has to have this implementation plan written by June 2024, and so they’re under the gun to get it done quickly and well. 

Jane Hughson is skeptical about what the city is getting for this $50K. Just an implementation plan? That’s all?

The counterargument is that we are investing in Southside and setting them up for success. Everyone goes with it in the end.

I’m not bothered by the $50K, but I am definitely nervous about whether Marbut’s worst instincts will show up in the details of the implementation.

Item 20: Short Term Rentals (STRs)

We saw this at a council workshop, back in January. Our current regulations are illegal: you can’t outlaw parties and you can’t require that the owner live on site. So we have to pass something new.

The new proposal states:

  • 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.

Shane Scott and Alyssa Garza are opposed to the proposal, but they’re extremely cagey about why.  Alyssa says the zones are weird.  Shane is opposed on general libertarian grounds.

Look: hand-wavy arguments like that are lazy. Spell out your reasons. If you can’t spell out your reasons, go think harder about why you’re arguing your case.

Anyway:  Jude Prather gives the impression that probably what’s bothering Shane and Alyssa is the bit about how STRs must be 600 feet apart.

Jane makes the same point as I made – Alyssa and Scott should specify what they don’t like in the ordinance, so that we can modify it instead of throwing the whole thing out.

Alyssa is kinda prickly in her response – she doesn’t have unlimited time or any staff to go work on this ordinance.

Confidential to all council members: you can always consult your friendly Marxist blogger for sound guidance, when you’re short on time! I got you.

….

Item 23: There have been a lot of opioid settlements:

We’re contracting with Cenikor to start spending the $325K-ish we’ve got:

That’s running us about $100K. Seems like as good a place to start as any.

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