Item 15: Back to the Lindsey Street Apartments.
You guys. These numbskulls spent ANOTHER 2.5 HOURS on these apartments. At one point, Mayor Hughson called it the most difficult zoning case that’s come before her in all her time in city government.
We’re still talking about these:
I dug this new visual from city staff:
(She comes in colors everywhere. She combs her hair. She’s like a rainbow!)
Anyway: that’s the view if you’re standing on Moore Street looking east towards campus. Project Site 1 is called “The West Half” by everyone, and Project Site 2 is called “The East Half”.
Discussed last time, and the time before that, and at P&Z before that, and even back in October.
Remember we’ve got this list of 14 concessions from the developer already:
In exchange for all this, the developer wants 7 stories and a permit for Purpose Built Student Housing on the East Half, and 4 stories on the West Half.
Let’s see if he gets it!
Recomendation 7: How much advance notice should tenants get? How many tenants will get guaranteed leases at the new place, at a similar rent, when it gets built eventually?
In Citizen Comment, a speaker asked for 12 month advance notice for all tenants instead of 6 months. The developer says great, no problem.
Also in Citizen Comment, TAG (Tenants Advocacy Group) says that they went door-to-door, and most tenants did not know this was going on, and there were way more families and seniors who were going to be displaced than previously claimed.
Jude Prather makes a motion include up to 10 families and all seniors in the guaranteed cheap leases, in the new apartments.
What this means is that the families and seniors will have still have to find housing while the new complex gets built. That should be 2-3 years. After that, they’re guaranteed a lease in the new building, at a price that’s similar to what they pay right now.
By the way: what do they pay now? Apparently the current apartments go for $850/month. I gotta say, that’s shockingly affordable.
Jane Hughson points out that we missed our chance – we could have required a certain number of housing units to be set aside as permanent affordable housing, when we gave them 7 stories. (This is a normal deal to cut with a developer.) But no one thought of that at the time, and now it’s too late.
(Was it actually too late? I wondered about that. But no one takes the conversation in that direction.)
The developer says that he’s fine extending affordable leases to those current families. But for how long? Would 7 years be okay?
Shane Scott cries, “7 years! That’s way too long! How is the developer going to pay back his loans?” (I don’t know Shane, but the developer is literally the one who suggested 7 years. I bet he’s going to be okay.)
Jude originally suggests families and seniors over 60. Later on, he changes it to be seniors over 57, which is oddly specific. (Those born in March? Under a full moon and a high tide? Or just the regular kind of senior?) But everyone is fine with that. Great.
The Vote: It’s actually three separate votes.
- 12 months advance notice for current tenants?
Yes, great: Everyone
No: No one.
- Affordable leases for ten families and seniors over 57 years old?
Yes, great: Everyone
No: No one
- The affordable rent lasts for seven years?
Yes, great: Almost everyone.
How dare you, hell fucking no: Shane Scott
Recommendation 10: The developer won’t sell to any entity that doesn’t pay taxes for seven years.
This is because the university recently bought Sanctuary Lofts and The Vistas, and San Marcos lost a bunch of tax revenue.
Shane gives me whiplash. Now Shane makes a motion to amend this recommendation so that the developer can’t sell to ANYONE for seven years. Not just non-tax-paying entities, but also flipping it to another owner. Shane just doesn’t want the developer to flip the property, period.
Look, I am still totally indifferent to this whole thing. But Shane is being weird. Of the hours of complaints we’ve sat through, no one has complained about the developer flipping the property for flipping’s sake.
The developer says “The bank wouldn’t lend to me if they can’t unload the property if something happens to me. This would kill the whole project.”
Shane withdraws his motion.
Recommendation 5: PARKING. After P&Z, the developer was going to provide 0.85 parking spaces per bedroom.
Originally the developer asked for CD-5D zoning on the whole project. Jane is the one who got everyone on board to change the zoning on the West Half to be CD-5 instead. What’s the difference? The extra “D” stands for “Downtown” and she didn’t want to increase downtown.
But here’s the problem: CD-5 doesn’t require as many parking spaces as CD-5D.
So Jane has kind of gotten herself in a pickle! She was the only one who cared about CD-5, but she’s also the only one who cares a lot about parking. So her move to CD-5 worked against her own goals on parking. Now she has to convince everyone to re-raise the parking back to the old levels.
(Well, Saul cares too. But he’s just a plain no on everything.)
The developer offers 0.78 parking spaces per bedroom. Jane wants 0.85 spaces per bedroom.
Briefly:
- Arguments in favor: if there’s not enough parking, students will park on the street.
- Arguments against: it’s super expensive to build a parking garage. Each space is $30,000.
The vote after a very long, tedious discussion: Should parking be 0.85 per bedroom, overall?
Yes: Jane Hughson, Saul Gonzales, Matthew Mendoza
No: Alyssa Garza, Mark Gleason, Jude Prather, Shane Scott
So it fails, 4-3. The developer will provide 0.78 spaces per bedroom.
Recommendation 8: How many stories high should the west side be?
Jane does not like the 4 stories on the west side.
- She does not like the height, specifically because it’s too close to Moore Street, which is too close to neighborhoods.
- But she also does not like the sheer quantity of people who will be living there. She was okay with the 4 stories on the west side until the last meeting when Council approved 7 stories on the east side. That made the whole project too big for her.
Everybody argues with her. Here’s the thing:
This is the zoning map of the region. You see all those tan regions to the left of the bright pink building I drew in? Those are all zoned multifamily. Any developer can build a 4 story multifamily building on any of those parcels right now, without getting any special permits.
Nobody is doing that because they’re zoned Multifamily 12, MF 18, and MF 24. That means sure, build your 4 stories, but you can only put 12 apartments in it. (Or 18, or 24). Whereas this developer is claiming he’s going to put 60 apartments on the 4th floor alone of the West Half.
(Side note: How the hell are you going to fit 60 apartments into a single floor, on the west half of that lot? Ie just this piece:
There’s no way. But the developer definitely claimed 60 units per story. Are these apartments going to be tiny shoe box sized little space-savers? Is that because it’s going to end up as a Texas State dorm at some point?)
[New thought: I just realized that those tenants who are going to be offered affordable leases in three years? I bet the new apartments are half the size of their current apartments. They really are getting screwed by this deal, even if the damage was mitigated.
Of course, we urgently need to deal with affordable housing on a meaningful scale, not just this one pocket of renters.]
Anyway: you can already build 4 stories to Moore Street, but you can’t pack in very many apartments per acre.
Jane finally makes it clear: she doesn’t like the height AND she also doesn’t like the density. The area can’t support this much traffic, she says.
The developer says, “We had a traffic study done! By the main San Marcos traffic study dudes! You saw it! They said it wouldn’t add any traffic.”
Jane says, “I’m talking about pedestrian traffic! There will be too many people walking.” (Literally she says this, at 3:56:40. Go listen if you want.)
Let’s just repeat this for the folks in the back rows: the literal problem Jane Hughson has with this project is that there will be too many students walking down Comanche Street to get to class.
MAYOR HUGHSON!! I implore you to stop making up stupid shit to worry about! That is not a real problem!
Jane also says there are a whole lot of other issues, too many for her to get into.
Enough of this. Let’s vote.
The Vote: shall it be restricted to three stories?
Yes: Saul Gonzales, Jane Hughson, Matthew Mendoza
No: Mark Gleason, Jude Prather, Shane Scott, Alyssa Garza
So it fails, 3-4. It can still be four stories high.
But there’s a plot twist: later on there’s a vote that requires a supermajority. The developer must win over six council members in order to clear that vote. So Jane can still tank this whole project. (Saul has that one “no” vote locked down tight.)
So here is the developer’s final offer: hey look, the ground is sloped. What if it’s three stories on the corner with the highest elevation, and then there’s a extra partial story on the part with lower elevation? From the one highest corner, it will look like it’s 3 stories high.
Jane begrudgingly agrees to this.
The re-vote: Shall it be 3 stories with a secret 4th story where the ground slopes down?
Yes: Everyone except for Saul Gonzales
No: Saul.
And with that, the wheeling and dealing comes to a close.
Oh it’s not over! the whole thing goes on for another 40 minutes – there’s the final vote on the permit for Purpose Built Student Housing, there’s a PSA amendment, and there’s the final re-zoning vote.
I’ll pull one last quote, and then be done with it. This is Alyssa Garza, at 4:24:
It’s important for me to share how complicated it was for me to form my stance on this development. Distinguishing genuine community concern from personal interest has been exceptionally difficult in this situation.
I’m going to ultimately support the development. It’s with frustration and reservation because my perception is that our failure to prioritize honest dialogue on affordable housing leaves us feeling like we’re settling for concessions from developers. I also think it makes it seem like elected officials are guided by fear of backlash from their base, rather than genuine community needs.
And we’re going to end up in this situation again, and it’s fueled by elected officials and city leadership who have historically have failed to confront the issue of affordable housing critically and with imagination.
This whole process is super frustrating to me. The university, developers, and others take advantage of structures that we created, right? Until we address that, we’re going to keep ending up in situations like this. Personally, I think we can’t claim to prioritize community wellness and housing until we start funding initiatives like tenant’s advocacy, making participation in planning and zoning conversations more accessible, and directing our very well-paid state and federal lobbyist to push for policy recommendations by entities like The Housing Playbook Project, Texas Houses and so on.
All our neighbors concerns were super valid. But denying this project doesn’t address any of them. I think it’s important for me to name that before we go into voting. If we want to have a real conversation about that, we can, but I just don’t see the interconnectedness with this development. That’s all I got.
Lightly edited for clarity, but not much.
I basically agree. We need to do real work on affordable housing and tenant protection. This isn’t that.
Can we be done with this now?
…
Item 17: Childcare Tax Exemptions
Texas used American Rescue Plan money to subsidize childcare in 2021 and 2022, to the tune of $34.6 billion dollars. So when it ran out last year, we had a childcare crisis in the state. Apparently 44% of the childcare facilities were predicted to close with the end of the funding, and 300,000 children in Texas stood to be affected.
Look: you can’t do free market childcare. It’s too expensive. You have to heavily subsidize it. Right now, we barely subsidize it, and so the average salary for daycare workers is $12/hour. For one of the most exhausting jobs on the planet! Insane. So daycares have trouble finding workers, and are starting to close in large numbers.
Here, feel free to read a bunch more links on the crisis.
According to this, Texas needed to invest $1.13 billion dollars in order to shore up our childcare. That seems like a bargain, compared to the $34.6 billion of ARPA money we just spent! And good news! We had a massive $32.7 billion budget surplus in 2023. Easy-peasy? Nope, sorry.
What the Texas Legislature did instead was put Prop 2 on the ballot, which passed last November. This said that cities were allowed to give a property tax break to childcare facilities.
To be clear, the state spent $0 on this solution. Cities foot the bill.
Each city gets to vote individually if they want to implement the tax break or not. So we voted this meeting to give the tax break to qualifying daycares in San Marcos.
This is good! This is the right thing to do. It is good to give a tax break to these entities.
It’s just nowhere near enough. We’re a wealthy state! We could be doing so much more.
…
Items 23-26: We then punted on a bunch of items, because it was nearing midnight.
- Economic incentives for a new grocery store? POSTPONE.
- Bylaws for commissions? POSTPONE.
- Paid Parking at the Lion’s Club? Sure, staff can start putting together a plan.
- Appointments to Boards and Commissions? POSTPONE.
This is all fine. People don’t do their best work at midnight.
….
One last thing
This is my highlighting:
I just love how everyone’s gotta be a Soviet Cold War Era spy when it comes to code names for your secret business plan.
The San Marxist 