What are our zany Councilmembers up to this week? Lots of little things: noise complaints, new low-income housing, that crazy storm, tiny homes, and more. Also, our budget is in trouble, which is definitely a bummer.
Let’s dive in!
Hours 0:00 – 1:36: In which we discuss the Dunbar-Heritage Area Plan split, a noisy warehouse, and two more low-income housing projects.
Hours 1:36 – 2:17: A wee bit of eminent domain, that crazy storm from May 9th, some new developments, Green Guy, and Tiny Houses
Noah Brock spoke about the SMART/Axis right of way annexation again. (The whole agenda item ended up getting postponed until July 2nd.)
…
Item 1: Area Plans
The city is diving into its first Area Plan, which was going to be the Dunbar-Heritage neighborhood. Discussed before, here.
Here was the boundary:
The very first thing that happened is that P&Z declared that this was a terrible idea. It needs to be split into two separate area plans, Dunbar and Heritage. Council agreed.
(Why? Historically, Heritage has always gotten all the resources and city attention, and Dunbar gets neglected. So we’re trying to stop doing that. This way each neighborhood can determine their own priorities and character.)
So tonight, we have new boundaries for two separate area plans:
All done! Splitsville.
(Now to write the actual area plans.) …
Item 16:
This warehouse place – Elliot Electric Supply – is off Wonderworld:
They’ve been operating since the 90s.
There were townhomes built here:
They were built in 2019.
Elliot Electric is in the yellow box below, and you can see the townhomes right across the street:
Here’s the problem: the developer who sold the townhomes did not disclose to the buyers how noisy the warehouse business is. The homeowners get woken up every night around 3 am, with delivery trucks, forklifts beeping when they back up, loud music playing, and so on.
In April, the warehouse guy came to P&Z for a permit to expand his warehouse. A bunch of condo owners showed up with a number of complaints.
The branch manager came across as a very sympathetic guy who had not been told that the neighbors had all these complaints, but was willing to work with them. He gave them his personal phone number and agreed to a fence to block the noise:
It also runs along Dutton Drive, which seems like the important part.
Ultimately, P&Z felt like the business has seniority, since they’d been operating this way for about two decades before the townhomes were built. So they approved the permit.
…
Sidebar: So what went wrong? How did we get here?
The townhomes were approved by this same P&Z, in this meeting. There was no mention of noise nearby. Probably the city staff weren’t aware and P&Z wasn’t informed.
If staff had known about the noise, they probably would have recommended a deed restriction, where the developer had to inform potential buyers about noises next door. But that did not happen.
I don’t think anyone was being a jerk here. But it would still be good to figure out a way for everyone to get some sleep at night, without wrecking this guy’s business model.
….
This brings us to Tuesday’s meeting: the condo association is appealing the P&Z decision to council. They want quiet hours.
There’s two problems.
First, San Marcos already has a noise ordinance. It’s just a matter of getting someone out to document it.
Second, it’s not really the local employees that are playing loud music, driving forklifts, etc at 3 am. It’s delivery drivers from Austin and San Antonio. They have keys to the place, let themselves in, unload the delivery, and head out.
Also, if they get the permit for the extra warehouse, it will (supposedly) help block some of the noise.
Council ends up circling in on some extra requirements:
Apparently there are noise-cancelling and white noise forklift add-ons, for the back up beep. Elliot Electric will put these on.
There will be conspicuous signs about how overnight workers need to keep it quiet
The vote: Should Elliot Electric keep their permit, with these extra requirements?
Yes: everyone No: no one
The actual solution here is to build relationships. The condo owners should use the branch manager’s personal cell phone number to let him know when they’re getting woken up. But they should be nice about it, and assume he’s doing the best he can. (And he should do the best he can.)
…
Items 17-18: Two LIHTC projects.
LIHTC sounds for Low Income Housing Tax Credits. There are two separate projects being proposed.
These were fake-affordable housing. But it was free for the city – they were going to the state for tax breaks.
Whereas these next two are not free for San Marcos, so they’d better be more legit. (Which they are!)
The first one is on McCarty, here:
between Hunter and I-35.
This one is supposed to be a retirement community, so it’s all 1 and 2 bedrooms.
Here’s the affordability part:
The important part is that first row: 34 units will be reserved for people earning under 30% of the Area Mean Income, or AMI. (We’re part of Austin metro, so we use Austin household income levels. It’s not ideal, but we can’t change that.)
Technical note: See in the first row where it says $0-$35,040 as the income range? That’s misleading, because that’s based on a family of 4, but these apartments are reserved for seniors. For one person, the 30% income cut-off is $24,550, and for two people, the 30% cut-off is $28,050. (Full AMI chart here.) You should also ignore the $58,401-$70,080 for the remaining 188 apartments. For one or two seniors, the income cut-off in this bracket is $40,900 or $46,750, respectively.
Point being: those 34 apartments are legitimately reserved for people without much money. This is good!
In addition, there are services for all residents:
I mean, fine. These are fine.
The property tax estimate for 18 years is $7,262,589, which works out to about $400K per year. So that’s the contribution of San Marcos to this project: about $400K per year.
The second LIHTC project is here:
Out between Centerpoint and Posey Road.
Here’s the affordability:
These are 1, 2, and 3 bedroom units. Here the income ranges do make sense, because there will probably be families living here. So there will be 55 units reserved for the lowest income bracket.
Great!
Services:
More services than the first place, but the location is worse. You don’t have Target and everything around the corner.
The property tax estimate is $4,000,000 for 15 years, or $266K per year.
I don’t totally understand how these things work, because:
This is cheaper per year than the first place – $266K vs $400K
There are more low-income units here – 55 vs 34
And in addition, this second place is offering us a cash-back offer. So clearly I’m missing something about why all this makes sense.
For the cash-back offer, Council has a choice:
They’ll pay us $36,666 per year for 15 years, so we’d get $550K total.
Or, they’ll pay us $400K up front.
Council goes with the lump sum payout. Especially in lieu of the 3 pm workshop, where our budget took a beating.
Side note #1: Note that both projects are both along the railroad tracks. Poor people get to live along railroad tracks.
You know how it went. Someone said, “What can we do with this land, along the tracks? No one with money would live here. Maybe we get some poor-people tax credits and make some affordable housing?”
(I loathe wealth segregation so much.)
Side note #2: Both these complexes are reserving 15% of their units for people earning under 30% of the AMI. That’s because the city of San Marcos fixed 15% as the requirement for LIHTC applications.
We used to require that you set aside 25% of your units. But we didn’t get as many applications, and so we changed it to 15%. I don’t know how I feel about this.
But look. This chart is from 2017:
So seven years ago, we had a shortfall of 4233 rental units for all households earning under $35K. We have not updated these numbers since then.
These two LIHTC projects will yield 89 units. That’s a drop in the bucket.
This Council is not serious about housing affordability. If they were, they would start by dusting off the Housing Action Plan (which was deep-sixed in 2019) and updating it. They would listen to the research about what it takes to increase the affordable housing stock. (This is going to come up when we get to Tiny Homes, at the end of the meeting.)
for the Linda Drive project, which you can read about here.
We need this:
for the River Ridge Drainage Improvements Project, which you can read about at that same link as the Linda Drive project.
We aren’t just going in with guns blazing and taking the land. The plan is to go talk to the land owners and try to buy it. The key phrase for eminent domain is “To the extent that negotiations are unsuccessful.”
So, we’ll try. Otherwise we’ll take.
…
Item 19: That wild storm back on May 9th. (I hope everyone is okay.)
We’re pulling $750,000 out of the general fund to cover the associated costs, like all the extra curbside brush pickup and tree removal.
Here’s the thing: Hays County is requesting a disaster declaration. If we get it, then we can get reimbursed for this expense. Which is good, since our budget is kinda tanking at the moment. (See here)
To get the disaster declaration, we have to report at least $1.1 million in damages. And the more we report, the more federal money we can receive. You get reimbursed in proportion to the damages you report.
So really, the community needs to report whatever happened:
Volunteer hours. Did you and some neighbors spend a few hours using a chainsaw on your neighbor’s fallen tree? Report it.
Did you have to pay for tree removal? Report it.
Did your car or your house get damaged? that really sucks and I’m sorry. But also, report it.
Go here and scroll down to “Reporting Damages” and “Reporting Volunteer Hours”.
There, that’s your good deed for the day.
…
Item 21: Project Snapdragon
Ah, such intrigue.
Council approved this with zero discussion and no presentation, so I’m basically winging it here. (There are slides in the packet, but staff didn’t present them during the meeting.)
Let’s see how I do!
A speculative industrial building. So in other words, they don’t know who exactly will lease it yet, but they’ve got a good feeling in their belly.
It’s going to be here:
In other words, if you’re going southbound on the frontage road, it’s behind these buidlings here:
right behind Floor King, Life Storage, and Classic Collision.
Side note: Do we all think “Floorking, I don’t even know how to floork” when we see that place, or just me? (You will now! Sorry!)
What will it look like?
haha, no it won’t. Renderings are just pretty pictures. They’re not promises. They’ll build whatever they want (as long as it fits city code).
How much money are we giving them?
Ok, so we’re giving them $235K. How much do we think we’ll get?
So someone is projecting that we’ll bring in $97K yearly, once it’s up and running.
Side note: You know what would be nice? To go back 5-10 years at old Chapter 380 agreements, and see how they panned out. In 2014, who did we give tax breaks to? What kind of revenue did they pinky swear to generate? How much money are we actually collecting from them?
Anyway, Chapter 380 agreements now take two readings, so if you hate this, you can tell us all about it at the next meeting.
…
Item 22: 5 year lease with Green Guy Recycling
We went over all the details here, in a workshop back in March. So now it’s official. 💍
….
Item 26: Tiny Homes
Mayor Hughson brought this item up. I think what Jane is saying is that you should be able to build Tiny Homes on weird, tiny lots.
We started allowing Tiny Homes under the land development code in 2021. Right now, there are a few ways to have one:
In a single family zoning, you can put one on a lot, just like a non-tiny home.
If you want to put several of them on a lot, it needs to be zoned for mobile homes. So in most neighborhoods, you can’t do this.
If you had a big lot, you could apply for a zoning change to a zone where you could subdivide it into several small lots. This would go to P&Z and Council, where they’d look at it on a case-by-case basis.
Matthew Mendoza says that he doesn’t want someone subdividing a larger lot into several small lots to put tiny homes on them.
Mark Gleason: As long as we’re not doing what Austin did!
What he’s talking about is this: Austin passed a new ordinance that changes the minimum lot size for houses from 5,750 square feet to 1,800 square feet.
Let’s talk about this, because I think it’s really important. Here’s a 6,000 square foot lot:
That’s a listing from San Marcos. If you set Zillow to lot sizes of 5000-75000 square feet, the vast majority of San Marcos options are in the $300K range.
You can have much bigger lots, but you can’t go smaller than that in a traditional Single Family 6 neighborhood. What this means is that your neighborhoods are sprawling and your prices stay high. It’s bad for traffic, bad for the environment, and bad for creating affordable housing. It’s good for keeping poor people away from middle and upper class people.
So last week, the Austin City Council approved a minimum lot size of 1800 square feet for single family neighborhoods. You can still have bigger lots! But you’re allowed to have small lots, in traditional neighborhoods. This is what is blowing San Marcos City Council’s collective minds.
The arguments against these things are usually about “preserving the character of a neighborhood”. But we’re not talking about bulldozing twenty houses and replacing them with a giant apartment complex. We’re talking about gently increasing the affordability and number of people in a neighborhood. I promise it won’t hurt.
These changes really do bring down housing costs, and higher density really does cut down on traffic, sprawl, and the environmental impact.
Presentation 1: Our budget is not doing well. Let’s look at some slides.
First, San Marcos keeps growing:
And while inflation is back to a normal healthy amount, it still exists:
So due to a larger population and 3% inflation, it will cost more to run the city more next year, even if we don’t change what we’re doing.
But unfortunately, we took a big hit on sales tax:
This is sort of a cumbersome chart. It’s doing a few things simultaneously.
So you see where it says October 2023 is 6.6%? What that means is:
Average all the sales tax revenue from October 2021 to October 2022.
Average all the sales tax revenue from October 2022 to October 2023.
Work out the percent growth from the first average to the second average. For October, the past 12 months were 6.6% bigger than the previous 12 months. Great!
But you can see how this plays out over 2024 – we kept shrinking and then turned negative. So the average the sales tax income from April 2023 to April 2024 is smaller than it was over April 2022-April 2023. That is not good.
Who’s coughing all this up, anyway?
I would not have guessed that!
(I would say it’s their customers, not the business, but you get the point.)
No one else is having this problem. Just San Marcos:
No one offers up an explanation, because I don’t think anyone has one? Nobody knows if this is a shortterm fluke, or if it’s the beginning of something bad. We can’t know until it plays out a little more.
Anyway, here’s the bottom line:
We do not have the money we thought we’d have this year.
So we have to do two things simultaneously:
Figure out how to tighten our budgets mid-year. There are established contingency plans on how to do this, but it’s not, like, fun to do.
Figure out how to plan for the 2025 budget, if we’ve got more people and slightly higher prices, but less revenue.
Can property taxes make up the difference? Basically no.
First off, sales tax is a bigger chunk of our budget than property taxes:
But second, even though homestead prices are going up:
they’re not going up by as much as they had been going up.
The blue portion is the key amount:
So the city is expecting to collect 1.3 million more dollars next year than this year. It’s growing, but not enough to keep up with inflation and a larger population. Not like the past two jumps: from 2023 to 24, we jumped 6.8 million, and the year before that, an extra 5.8 million dollars.
So here’s the bottom line:
We are looking at being 2.3 million short this year, and 1.12 million short next year, if we don’t do anything different. Ouch.
I mean, we’re going to tighten belts, etc. The city is smart, there are plans to implement. But they involve hard choices and going without good things.
Here’s how we’re handling 2024:
Basically, that’s how they’re handling it. And they’re working on making next year’s budget work on a shoestring, as well.
One last thing:
There’s a new law that caps the how much business property appraisals can increase each year. Any non-homestead can’t grow more than 20% in a year. Or rather, the appraisal can come in higher than that, but you won’t be taxed on the excess.
Now, this only affects businesses appraised under $5 million. The problem is that we have a high number of small rental properties, and they all qualify. So we’ve lost $123 million of taxable land value, which works out to $745K from the budget.
Bottom line: the city has to tighten the budget. Kinda a giant bummer.
…
Presentation 2: There was also a presentation on the 2025 Capital Improvement Plan.
The CIP plan is all the major city projects, like re-doing the drainage for a street so it doesn’t flood anymore, or whatever. Basically it takes a lot of longterm planning. I don’t have much to say about it besides that they emphasized how much they’re trying to apply for lots of grants.
Hey there kiddos! I hope everyone is safe from the storm on Thursday. Big citizen comment time – mostly Malachi Williams and a call for ceasefire resolution – and then lots of little city business topics.
Here we go:
Hours 0:00 – 2:03: Two hours of citizen comments! The biggest topics are the SMPD killing of Malachi Williams and a call for a resolution on a ceasefire of Palestine. (And a bit on Bro-dozers, the resurrection of SMART/Axis Terminal, and some other things.)
Hours 2:03 – 3:58: La Cima, baseball and soccer youth scholarships, selling more water to Kyle, speed cushions, bringing more grocery stores in, concrete, and a new wastewater treatment plant. Lots of little items.
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: Three interesting presentations: Equity Cabinets, the Point-in-Time homeless count, and those orange scooters are spreading. This was my favorite part of the meeting!
Yowza, you guys. Most of this meeting was Citizen Comments. There were two full hours of citizen comments on Tuesday. A total of 40 speakers. Plus an additional 3 speakers at the 3 pm meeting.
So we are going to park it at Citizen Comment and unpack all this.
Topic 1: Malachi Williams.
We’re going to start with the most heartbreaking part, which is that the family of Malachi Williams spoke to council. I cannot do it justice – you should go listen yourself. Here’s the video. – Malachi’s grandfather speaks first, at 1:25:40 – His older sister, at 1:29 – His mother at 1:31 – His younger sister at 1:36 – His aunt at 1:38:30 – His third sister at 1:58 – His grandfather also spoke at the 3 pm workshop, here at 11:30.
You should definitely believe that Malachi Williams came from an incredibly loving, supportive family who is devastated by this loss. They are desperate for some answers.
Take the officer off duty until the investigation is complete
Let the family and their lawyer watch the bodycam videos, as well as gas station and HEB footage.
These are really reasonable. In the video, Chief Standridge has a big long thing about how legally, the videos are evidence, and so they can’t be released publicly until after the grand jury and/or trials play itself out. But the family is not asking him to publicly release the videos – they’re asking for family and a lawyer to see them.
The family’s comments are beautiful and heartbreaking. They’re an extremely close family. They just need answers so that they can begin processing this enormous loss.
The rest of us will not know what happened for a long time. (But look: a knife is not a gun. He was armed with two large kitchen knives. I have questions about how exactly Malachi could be close enough to pose an immediate risk to someone else, and yet it was safe to fire a gun at him.)
About 20 of the other speakers talked about Malachi Williams and called on Council for justice.
Topic 2: Ceasefire in Gaza.
There were 32 speakers calling on Council to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. (Most of these speakers were also the same ones who talked about about Malachi Williams, and they connected these two topics under the same umbrella of state violence against civilians.)
There’s been some drama, because this appeared on the rough draft of the council agenda:
But then it was not on the final agenda, because Shane Scott withdrew his support. (It takes two council members, or the mayor alone, to put something on the agenda.)
Lots of speakers say that Shane withdrew his support due to a threat of some sort? Maybe! Or maybe he just didn’t feel like being in the hot seat. Who knows.
Anyway, 32 speakers is a LOT of speakers. The resolution for a ceasefire has been coming up for months – here, here, here, here, and here – but not this many speakers. Obviously this connects with the mounting protests at Columbia, University of Texas, USC, and so on.
And look, the protests are actually paying off. Biden has paused two shipments of bombs to Israel over the invasion of Rafah. Biden is slowly hardening on Israel. (He’s going too slowly for me to stomach, but he’s miles away from how Abbot or Trump would handle it. They would escalate the destruction of Palestine to armageddon levels. )
Look, we’ve got a governor who is actively supporting Israel in a number of ways.
This ceasefire resolution is a municipal issue because city councils can amplify the voices of their community. This resolution would send a message to Abbott (which he would ignore) and a smaller message to Biden (which he seems to be responding to). So c’mon, Council, get your act together.
Topic #3: Miscellaneous
Finally, there were a few other topics:
The need for more teen programming in San Marcos
A great comment about “bro-dozers”. I love this one. You know the guys that rev their engines through town and startle you into spilling your drink, if you weren’t expecting it?
The speaker has an apartment on Hopkins, and so he got himself a decibel reader. When the bros rev their engines, it’s 90-95 decibels in his apartment.
But see, it only covers music coming from the vehicle, and not the engine itself.
But consider:
Presto! Look how easy to fix!
City staff! File this away for the next round of code updates, please and thank you.
Remember the SMART Terminal? Oh yes you do. (Brush up on it here, if you don’t.)
It was originally on the agenda for tonight as well:
But it got pushed back to a future meeting. (Franklin Mountain is the SMART/Axis company.)
Noah Brock and Annie Donovan were two of the main activist organizers last time. They’ve submitted a ton of open records requests. Here’s what they’re saying about this upcoming issue:
Franklin-Mountain is apparently getting mad at Caldwell County, because Caldwell County doesn’t let developers do whatever the hell they want. Caldwell County requires all these planning documents up front, such as:
Subdivision plan
Water Protection Plan
Phase Development Plan
Traffic Impact Analysis
and more!
before they’ll process Franklin-Mountain’s application.
Whereas we were all ready to let the developer pinky-swear to be good-hearted, and we’d sign over all rights to do anything they wanted. We didn’t require any of those!
So here, the developer is moving roads around, in ways that seem to violate their good-neighbor promises. This roadway doesn’t match anything they’ve claimed up till now. This annexation seems like it would not benefit San Marcos in any way, but it would off-load costs onto the city.
Stay tuned! This might be on the agenda at the May 21st meeting.
Virginia Parker speaks again about the drought triggers passed last time, and asks if there’s any way to revise it.
One speaker talks about Purpose Built Student Housing, and has a number of recommendations to address tenants’ rights. Things like increased funding for code enforcement, a right to resolve late payments before evictions, a right to a public defender, just cause evictions, and no-net-loss housing ordinances.
Texas is very pro-landlord, so it would take some research to figure out what’s legal to do here, but I generally support all action in this direction!
Items 9-10: It’s been a while since we discussed La Cima. (Quick primer on La Cima development here.)
Basically, it was originally approved in 2013.
In 2014, it looked like this:
As of 2022, it looked like this:
It’s grown! It seems to keep growing, in fact.
The problem is that the entire development is in the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone. It’s incredibly sensitive land, but it keeps growing. Anytime there’s an amendment to the Development Agreement, you should sit up straight and take a closer look.
In this meeting, they’re not changing the actual La Cima Development Agreement. So there’s nothing controversial here. Today’s annexation is just following the existing agreement.
The highlighted pink part is what they’re about to start building now:
Have fun with that, you guys!
It’s going to be single-family houses.
….
Items 7-8: We’re giving a bunch of Covid (ARPA) money to youth soccer and youth baseball, for scholarship money.
Alyssa Garza asks: how easy will it be for parents to get these scholarships? There’s been a lot of problems with ARPA funds and all kinds of paperwork that make it too hard for community members to actually get the money.
No one really has an answer, but they say that it should be as simple as having a San Marcos address, since most of San Marcos is located in qualifying census tracts.
Unrelated Note: I heard a rumor once that San Marcos Soccer was going to change their name to Smoccer, but instead they went with Surge Soccer. Truly a missed opportunity, I don’t know how they sleep at night.
…
Item 2: (Items are out of order, because they got pulled off the consent agenda)
We’re selling more Edwards Aquifer water rights to Kyle.
Just like last time, city staff emphasizes that Kyle is going to use this water whether or not we sell our rights, so we might as well collect the $7k – $1.5 million from them, for the proper water rights.
They have to follow or strengthen all our drought restrictions. Currently, they’re running a tighter ship than we are, but then again, we just loosened our drought triggers considerably.
People drive like maniacs on Barbara Drive, and eventually the residents got sick of it. So they filed a petition. There was a survey and some data collection, and everyone agreed that this was a good idea.
Item 13: Let’s woo some grocery stores on the East side of town, eh?
New Braunfels wooed HEB like so:
Kyles wooed Sprouts like so:
So we want to offer up some goodies for new grocery stores in San Marcos.
Here’s some questions for Council to field:
Do we just want offers for the east side, or all over San Marcos?
Do we only want big grocery stores, or are we open to a mix of big and little grocery stores?
Do we want to give them a property tax rebate, or a sales tax rebate, or both?
Do we want to offer them some grant money up front?
We’ll negotiate individually with any retailer. This is just putting something out there to negotiate.
So what does council think?
Do we just want offers for the east side, or all over San Marcos?
Jane Hughson is super enthusiastic that the west side needs more grocery stores. She mentions this several times. Most everyone else says they’re open to offers from all over town.
Alyssa is the one exception: her priorities are strictly the east side of town, and good paying jobs.
My two cents: we should not subsidize grocery stores on the west side. We’ve specifically said that we do not want to encourage growth over the recharge zone, because run-off ends up in the underground springs that feed the river. Rivers only run clear if the recharge zone is kept clean.
Second, the west side residents have higher incomes. This attracts grocery stores, as soon as there are enough people living there. If a grocery store wants to open a location there, they already can. But the lower incomes on the east side mean that even with tons of people, grocery stores won’t open there without subsidies.
Just big grocery stores? (like 120,000 square feet or bigger). Or both big and little grocery stores?
Everyone’s open to a mix of big and little stores. This is my preference, too.
What kind of tax breaks? Jane Hughson makes a strong case for giving sales tax rebates instead of property tax rebates. Basically, with a sales tax rebate, their rebate rises with their performance. It aligns the incentives of the city and the store.
They settle on a 5 year offer. Both property and sales tax would rebate 80% in the first year, and then step down from there.
4. Should we offer grant money up front?
No, we shouldn’t. No one likes this, and we’re not really set up to do it anyway.
Anyway: This is just a preliminary discussion. There will be more to come.
…
Item 15: Concrete
We’re paying for $1,000,000 of concrete.
Honestly, it’s not very clear who we’re paying it to:
but I gather it’s these guys. (They spent about one minute on this item, so I have no details for you.)
Either way, I am amused by the acronym IDIQ, for Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity. Doing this forever and ever and ever.
….
Item 16: We’re building a Wastewater Treatment Plant!
We spent literally 3 minutes on this during the meeting, and there were no details given.
There is a slide show in the packet, which they did not present during the meeting. So I’m improvising here, with pictures like this:
Maybe the purple areas will be the areas served, and that green corner piece is where the plant will go?
Here’s a close up of that green corner piece from above:
Here’s one of those “I-35 Goes East-West” maps that I am so fond of:
The presentation says this will address all of San Marcos’s waste water needs through 2063.
That’s about all I can get out of that slide show!
Item 18: Purpose Built Student Housing
Back in January, there was a recommendation from the Neighborhood Commission that we end Rent-by-the-Bedroom leasing practices, or RBB. (Discussed previously here – they also wanted to re-instate the ban on 3 unrelated people living together.)
One problem is that the city does not regulate RBB. The city regulates Purpose-Built Student Housing, but these aren’t the same thing. You can have either one without the other.
Council decides that this topic is big enough that it needs a workshop discussion. So stay tuned on this.
(Jude Prather recused himself from the discussion, due to his wife’s employment at Texas State. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing remotely conflict-of-interest about this – but sure, why not.)
I learned that there’s something called an “equity cabinet”. You pull together a bunch of people who represent traditionally underrepresented groups in your community, and have them thoroughly study a problem in the community, and make policy recommendations. (Here is the example from the presentation of where it’s been done before.)
Dr. Rosie Ray is a researcher at Texas State (and we’ve seen her before: here and here and here and here and here). She got some funding to partner with the city of San Marcos – if the city is interested – to put together an equity cabinet to study all things transportation-related.
Who exactly are the traditionally underrepresented groups? Biden defines it like so:
Who are the local partners who can put forth good candidates for this cabinet?
What would they be focusing on?
So about 10 people would be chosen to work closely together over five months. They’d get paid, it would be structured and well-planned, etc etc. The cabinet would have to get up to speed on the challenges that the city faces and what we’re currently doing.
So what does council think?
Everyone’s on board! Sounds like it’s a go.
Here’s the timeline:
I look forward to hearing the recommendations from the cabinet!
….
Item 2: PIT Count
How many homeless people are there? It’s not an easy question to answer, for obvious reasons.
One way you do it is with a “Point in Time” count (ie, a PIT count). You pick one day (in January, per HUD requirements) and get as many volunteers as possible to go out into your county and try to lay eyes on as many homeless people as possible. But also, you talk to the people and try to get a snapshot of the people who are homeless that night.
Homeless Coalition of Hays County conducted ours on January 25th this year. They’re part of the Texas Homeless Network. It took 50 volunteers that day, and 17 more doing background work.
It’s not perfect:
But it’s still useful!
Keep in mind that homelessness is complicated:
The chronically homeless people are the most visible. These are the people you see along I-35 or in public areas. These are the people most likely to get counted in the PIT count.
The hidden or transitional homeless people are much harder to count. Who knows if you’re couch-surfing, or living in your car? Especially if it’s on-again, off-again? A lot of these people are holding jobs and functioning in society, but can’t afford housing.
Results:
“Sheltered” means Hays County Women’s Shelter or Southside Community Center/BR3T program with motels.
So why is the number of unsheltered people going up? Most likely, it’s two things:
we’re getting better at locating and counting homeless people, and
rising housing costs are displacing more people, so there are actually more homeless people.
Where are the homeless people in Hays County?
Mostly in San Marcos.
This also has a couple reasons! We’ve got most of the resources here. But also, the people conducting the PIT count know San Marcos mostly thoroughly. They know where to check in town. We need cooperation from people with deep knowledge of Dripping Springs and Wimberly homeless communities, if we’re going to find and locate people there.
On that day, the PIT Count volunteers make 4 sweeps, but all during daylight, for safety reasons. They also chat with the homeless people, if the person is interested in chatting. So we get some informal survey data.
Survey results:
So what good is this? First, it allows us to apply for lots of funding.
Quick Detour: Remember Robert Marbut, from here and here? He was Trump’s homelessness expert, and then we tapped him to write a Homeless Action Plan for San Marcos.
Marbut advocates for “Treatment First” programs. You do not house someone until they’re stable enough to keep the housing. (If this seems cruel, you might have spotted the fly in the ointment.)
Under the Biden Administration, HUD funds “Housing First” programs. You get someone off the streets, first. Once they have some basic safety and security, then you can work on mental health and addiction issues. (The main argument against this is, “If you offer housing with no strings attached, you’re threatening capitalism! Workers won’t hustle and turn a profit if they’re not scared of having their life crumble!” Mm-hmm.)
Presidents matter. They install people to run all the major organizations, like HUD, the EPA, Dept of Education, DoE, etc. Under Biden, you will have sane people implementing humane policies. Those policies affect things like how cities help homeless people. It really matters.
Anyway, here are the slides from the presentation on why Housing First is more effective than Treatment First:
It’s more effective and less cruel! Win-win.
The PIT count is not the only measure of homelessness. There’s also the McKinney-Vento report for kids enrolled in public schools:
The McKinney-Vento report measures things slightly differently than the PIT Count. They try to record how many kids are couch-surfing, which is the “doubled up” category, and who is temporarily living in a hotel or motel. Whereas the PIT count doesn’t catch either of those unless Southside is paying for the hotel room.
One last note: Jude Prather volunteered at the PIT count, and works in his job to get vets housed, and he deserves some kudos for that hard work.
He also made a point of advocating for increased funding for organizations that provide individual case work for homeless people, which I think is a reference to H.O.M.E. Center.
I agree! They do great work.
…
Item 3: Spin Cycles
You might recognize these scooters from such hits as:
“I’m abandoned, blocking a sidewalk” or “I hope you didn’t need to use a wheelchair on this sidewalk”.
All kidding aside, they popped up in San Marcos back in 2021.
(It’s kind of weird – there’s no history about these scooters on the blog. Council did not discuss them when they were approved in 2021, nor when they were re-upped in 2022. No workshop, no discussion, nada. Did they go straight from Executive Session to the Consent Agenda, with zero public discourse? I think so!)
I’m actually in favor of this kind of thing! I mostly think the program is great (aside from blocking sidewalks).
This is my best guess as to how it works: you download an app. It shows you where the nearest scooter is. You can activate the scooter and ride it within a certain zone. The company is supposed to maintain and insure the scooters, and make sure they get tidied up on a regular basis so that they don’t prevent people in wheelchairs from using the sidewalk once they’re discarded.
Here’s the current boundary of where they work:
I assume when you hit a boundary, they just deactivate, like a sad ghost who hit the wall of their haunting-perimeter.
They max out at 15 mph, and the company has slow-zones where they max out at 10 mph.
Overall, the program is successful!
They’re heavily used.
They’re significantly cheaper than owning a car
They’re better for the environment.
They’ve had 1 reported safety incident in 2022-2023.
They’re great at preventing people in wheelchairs from using the sidewalk. (Kidding. But this is my one major gripe.)
The company is asking for a two things:
Bigger service area. They want to cross I-35, at Aquarena Springs Road:
This is a great area to include. There are tons and tons of students there, going back and forth to campus.
The big issue is I-35, of course. (I sometimes fantasize about what it would be like if I-35 had never split this town in half.)
Here’s what they’ll have to navigate safely:
The intersection of Aquarena and I-35 does technically have a sidewalk path that riders can take the entire way, to navigate it.
[Confidential to anyone who drives a car, truck or SUV: People are fragile. Please drive your 2000 lb vehicle timidly.]
2. Their second ask is to operate 24/7.
Right now, the scooters only work 5 am-midnight. So they’re not restricted to daylight hours, but they’re not available when the bars close at 2 am, either. But they’d like to be!
They have some safety options to mitigate things:
So I guess you can’t be so drunk that your vision is blurring? This seems like a low bar to clear, but at least they’re not getting behind the wheel of a car?
They can also throttle the max speed, and cap them all at 10 mph during overnight hours.
What does Council think?
Jane Hughson is a little wary of the I-35 exchange, and asks if we can put up some signs or markers directing scooters to take that specific sidewalk path.
Answer: sure.
Mark Gleason has some reservations about I-35 as well, but is mostly enthusiastic about looping in the east side and connecting them across 35. He asks if they can extend the zone to Walmart.
(I agree that stretching it to Walmart is a great idea.)
Saul Gonzales asks if you can get a DUI on one of these.
Answer: Yes you can!
In the end, everyone’s on board with this. Also, it’s a pilot program that will come back in 6 months, so we can see how it’s doing.
The San Marxist 