Citizen Comment: much briefer than last time, but hitting most of the same points:
- Seven people spoke about Malachi Williams and calling for a ceasefire resolution in Gaza.
- Max Baker attended the UniverCity class that the city offers, and is calling for increased transparency.
- 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.
The last time we saw a LIHTC project was here:
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.)
In fact, city staff gave a workshop on the Housing Action Plan last July. But since then … <crickets>. It is up to Council to put things on the agenda and actually make them happen, and they are not doing that.
The San Marxist 