Month: June 2024

A solid hour of citizen comments to kick things off!  

Nearly everyone – 17 speakers – spoke about the issues of Malachi Williams’ death at the hands of SMPD, and calling for a ceasefire resolution for Gaza.

Malachi Williams: backstory here.

The family and activists are calling for three things:

1. Release the name and badge ID number of the officer that killed Malachi Williams
2. The officer should be placed on leave while the investigation is ongoing.
3. The family should be able to view all officer and storefront footage, with a lawyer present.

It sounds like the chief has offered to let the family watch some of the footage, but not all, and is denying the request to have their lawyer present. That’s pretty goddamn outrageous that you would ever require someone to forgo a lawyer in a legal context.  (They don’t have a right to a lawyer, because nobody is under arrest or anything, but plainly it’s what’s fair.)

A lawyer would be able to inform the family about what Chief Standridge is legally able to do, and what he can’t, and a lawyer can advise the family – on the spot – on what’s in their best interests. If a lawyer isn’t there, then Chief Standridge is the authority on what Chief Standridge is legally able to say and do. See the problem?

Resolution for a ceasefire:  

The activists didn’t just make this up on a whim. This is what’s going on all over the country.  They’re working on it in Austin, where they ultimately got fed up and passed a People’s Resolution instead. They’re working on it in San Antonio, which also got stuck. There haven’t actually been any cities in Texas that have been successful, but here’s a full list elsewhere.

There were a few other speakers:

• One guy from Outsiders Anonymous shows up to advocate for their gym/treatment center during the CDBG grants item. (We ended up funding them at about 80% of what they asked.)
• One speaker talks about her adult child with disabilities. There’s no day center in San Marcos anymore, and he commutes to New Braunfels.

We absolutely should have a day center for adults with special needs. I’m super uninformed on this topic, but it’s definitely part of serving the needs of your community.

But let’s talk about the other part: there’s no public transportation to get back and forth between San Marcos and New Braunfels.

Here’s the problem: we’re on the southern tip of the Austin Cap Metro service area:

New Braunfels, Redwood and Seguin are on the northern edge of the San Antonio Alamo Regional Transit:

And the two systems don’t overlap or coordinate on their boundaries, so there’s just this cliff dividing San Marcos from its neighbors:

Puzzle pieces! (I had fun making that picture.)

Suppose you use the shuttle service because of your physical disability. How are you supposed to get from Redwood to San Marcos? There are a lot more mental health resources in New Braunfels than in San Marcos, but only if you’ve got the means to get yourself there and back.

Listen: Seguin, New Braunfels, and San Marcos need to triangulate on some shared public transit along I-35 and 123. Austin Metro is not meeting our needs here.

…

Item 9: Community Development Block Grant applications, 2024-25

HUD gave us $766K this year to give away, and we’ve got $639K rolling over from last year. So total, we’ve got about $1.4 million to give away.

First off: we have $639K leftover? Out of $712K that we were awarded last year? What on earth happened?!

It turns out that it rolls over from year to year, and there are project delays. It’s spelled out in the report here:

So the first two categories – Housing Programs and Public Facilities – are really falling short.

Alyssa Garza asks about the Housing Rehab program?

Answer: Housing Rehab had $800K from CDBG and $800K from ARPA, for a total of $1.6 million. They are running seriously behind. Currently there are 30 houses with bids in place. Five are under construction and 25 are pending, and that will use up the funding.

Alyssa also asks: Can we hire lawyers to help homeowners with title problems? (This is mentioned under the Home Demo program above – “Properties with sub-standard structures also tend to have ownership issues”.)

Answer: We mostly rely on volunteers, because Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid tends to be so backed up.

Alyssa: There are free legal aid programs at St. Mary’s and UT-Austin that have offered to help.

The staff is vaguely friendly about this suggestion, but not in an “omg I’ll do that tomorrow” kind of way.

In the end, they decide to put “paying for a lawyer” on the list of side-projects that can be consulted when there’s a loose bit of money that suddenly becomes available.

Onto 2024! Here’s the criteria that we use:

(For what it’s worth, I don’t love the Council Priorities. I think they risk creating perverse incentives.)

Moving on! There was one ineligible application and 11 eligible applications. Here are the recommended funding amounts from staff:

Anyway: Council does not make any changes.

I believe this is just a first reading, so if you’ve got advice for Council, you’ve got another chance at the July meeting.

…

Items 10-11: Kissing Tree

Kissing Tree was approved in 2010. It’s a PDD – “Planned Development District”. This means the city got to micromanage every last detail of the whole project, and put it in writing, in a contract.

[Quick primer on PDDs: They’re a mixed bag. You can spell out exactly what will be built, but you can also waive a lot of regulations that the developer doesn’t like. In general, PDDs are only as good as the Council that negotiates them.

We got rid of them in 2016, which was an unforced error and I’ve complained about it a lot.  Then recently we brought them back again. So now the city has the ability to lock things down again.]

Here’s where it is:

You know, this thing, out on Hunter Road and Centerpoint:

Here’s the original plan:

So, a lot of homes around a lot of golf course. (To their credit, they use reclaimed water on the golf course.)

That map has not been updated since 2010, so I have no idea how much has been built out already.

Kissing Tree wants to modify their PDD, so they have to go back to Council.  Here’s what Kissing Tree wants to do:

“Active Adult Units” means senior housing. 

In other words:
The original plan is for 3,450 units:
– 2,850 were senior housing
– 600 were available for everyone else.

Now they want build 3,150 total units:
– 3,150 for seniors
– 0 available for everyone else.

It’s not that big a deal – I’m sure this is more profitable for them now – but I’m irritated that no one provided an explanation or talked about consequences.   In fact, Council talked about it for roughly 30 seconds, and this was the entire exchange:

Shane Scott: “This is a great example of why PDDs are so useful. We got rid of them, and we should bring them back.”

Jane Hughson: “We are bringing them back. We’ve discussed this.”

Shane: “Was I here for that?”

Jane: “I think so?”

SMCISD gets kind of affected by this kind of decision. The problem is that San Marcos is lopsided – we need more families to balance out all the non-family tax base (ie the university, the outlet malls, and things like Kissing Tree.) From time to time, we get dinged under the state’s Robin Hood law and have to send money back to the state for poorer districts, despite being a Title 1 school district ourself. It’s a complicated mess.

But just remember: Texas squandered a $32 BILLION dollar surplus last legislative session.  This was sales tax money – from all Texans – which got sent back to property owners. We literally took money from renters and gave it to home owners.

There is plenty of money in this state to fund all schools properly. We just need to elect a governor and legislature that wants to do so.

….

Item 12:  Good news on the Water-Wastewater Treatment Plant front!   

We’re getting a new centrifuge:

and a diffuser replacement in aeration basin:

We promise not to spend more than $6,716,477.45.

And a very special San Marxist shout-out to the kind soul on city staff who put these photos in the powerpoint presentation!

These slides didn’t even get shown during the meeting. I see you, I appreciate you.

…

Item 16:  We are meekly opening the door for the possibility of maybe someday, beginning a conversation about paid parking downtown.

This is such a tentative baby step that there are no details or decision points yet.  We’re just strapping on our sun bonnets, lacing up our sneakers, and sizing up the path ahead of us.

I did think this heat map was interesting:

That map is pretty unintelligible; here’s my attempt to improve:

This is only measuring parking – not traffic congestion or anything.

Here’s what the colors mean:
20 red blocks: street parking is generally over 90% full.
Three orange blocks: street parking is usually 85-90% full.
Twelve yellow blocks: street parking is usually 75-85% full.
Eight green blocks: street parking is usually 50-75% full.
Four light blue blocks: street parking is usually 25-50% full.
Three dark blue blocks: street parking is usually under 25% full.

…

It was a very short meeting!