Hours 0:00 – 1:54, 8/20/24

Citizen Comment:

A few main items:

Malachi Williams. (7 speakers)
SMART/Axis Terminal road annexation (3 speakers)
Some one-off topics: San Marcos Civics Club, ceasefire in Gaza, RFP for wastewater, council attentiveness to residents.

Let’s tackle the killing of Malachi Williams first. There have been some major developments – namely the grand jury declined to press charges against the officer, and so he’s not facing any legal repercussions. SMPD released the name of the officer who killed Williams, but no one else, and the bodycam video from that cop, but not the rest of the footage.

I get to go first, because this is my platform!

Listen: there’s a big gap between what’s legal and what’s moral.*

Here’s what’s legal: According to Chief Standridge, the cops followed de-escalation procedure in the convenience store. Then there was a footrace. Malachi Williams was holding knives, and headed through the HEB parking lot, and so the cop shot at him several times.

The grand jury did not indict the police officer. This is legal – it means they thought there was not enough evidence to convict the cop in court. And the grand jury is probably correct. The Supreme Court standard for cops is that they are allowed to shoot if they perceive a threat. That is a very low bar to clear, which is why it’s unlikely this officer would have been convicted. It is easy to believe that this officer will claim that he perceived a threat. Therefore he’s allowed to shoot and kill Malachi Williams.

This is all legal.

None of this is moral. As a society, we failed Malachi Williams in many, many ways. Long before the night of April 11th, we had set the stage for this, because we do not provide anywhere near enough investment in mental health services and housing for homeless people.

Once Malachi Williams is having a mental health crisis on April 11th, we sent police officers in blue uniforms. These officers may have been trained in current de-escalation techniques, but plainly that training is nowhere close to what this kid needs. Remember, Malachi Williams had been acting creepy, but not violent. He has not actually threatened anyone with a knife, or even been close enough to anyone to threaten them with a knife. Importantly, he does not have a gun.

Malachi Williams runs away. You run away when you’re scared. But the cops do not think of him as being scared. They think of him running towards HEB, with knives. They themselves are running towards HEB too, with guns.

Malachi, with knives, is considered a worse threat than a cop openly firing a gun in the HEB parking lot. Malachi’s life is not worth the extra police training that it would take for this officer to better understand how to handle this situation. That is not moral.

Ultimately, the only person who did anything violent is the police officer. Malachi Williams is now dead and his family are now left to grieve. This is a moral failing by the police department and the larger, complacent society.

Some good links:
– why police officers are rarely prosecuted
– how to think about police reforms
– Guiding Principles on Use of Force, with a whole section on both mental health and people with knives. (That is a police research group, and they argue that police should never need to shoot someone with a knife.)

Onto what the speakers say:

The grand jury is unnaccountable and secretive.
SMPD needs to release the full footage. Did the cops deliver immediate medical aid, like they’re legally bound to? [I am very interested to know this, too!]
One person (Sam Benavides) submitted a FOIA request for all footage. She was told that she needed to provide names of officers in order to get their body cam footage. Of course, the only name that has been released is the one officer that held the gun, so this is totally circular obfuscation.

A note about grand juries: proceedings are generally not released to the public, because it’s one-sided. The defense is not present, just the prosecutor. So it would be unfair to the defendant to release a one-sided story. However: this falls apart with police shootings, because the prosecutor can sandbag the proceedings, out of working so closely with the police. Independent prosecutors would help a lot with police accountability.

*hat tip to my friend for helping me with this framing.

Axis/SMART Terminal road

Just to refresh, here’s what we’re talking about:

It’s that dotted blue line between Loop 110 and Hwy 1984. Not the whole thing, just the right hand elbow of it:

Speakers brought some numbers from TxDot, CAMPO, and the Traffic Impact Analysis:

FM 1984 currently has 2380 cars per day
Hwy 80 has 17,400 cars per day
The new road is estimated to have 25,000 trucks per day.

So this is adding way more traffic to the surrounding roads.

Speakers also still want to know why the road moved – it used to be away from houses, and now it’s right by them. (We discussed this last time but didn’t get an answer.)

At the 3 pm meeting, the direct of of the San Marcos River Foundation (Virginia Parker) gave their two cents: they are in favor of the road annexation. They spoke to Caldwell County, who said that they’re stretched too thin to maintain the roads to San Marcos city standards. SMRF’s position is that it’s best for flooding if the city of San Marcos is responsible for maintaining the roads.

At the 6 pm meeting, it was pointed out that San Marcos can surely come up with a workaround there. We make deals all the time to deal with this sort of thing.

….

Onto the meeting!

Item 1: The SMART/Axis Right-of-way road is up first! (Background here.)

Aaaaaaand…… It got postponed. Womp-womp. Something was discussed during Top Secret Executive Session that made Mark Gleason want to do more research on the issue?

One off-topic comment: SMART/Axis’s whole shtick is that they can’t possibly give any details up front, because they don’t know who their tenants will be. Last year, they just want the whole thing annexed and zoned in one big blank-check chunk. They are still refusing to provide any details whatsoever.

This slide was shown during the presentation:

Wow, look at that magical exponential growth! In 20 years, their property will be worth $10 billion dollars! They may have make-believe tenants that they can’t yet explain to us, but they will definitely be wildly successful, and the city will swim like Scrooge McDuck in the tax windfall. Let’s make all these important decisions based on this Very Serious Graph of Reality.

…

Item 12: Intralocal Agreement with the Animal Shelter

Up till now, San Marcos has been running a regional animal shelter, and it’s too much. So we’re transferring responsibility to Hays County, and operating a local animal shelter just for the city, instead.

Hays County was maybe taken by surprise by this? It’s in their court now.

City Manager Stephanie Reyes has talked with the city managers in Buda and Kyle, and has requested a few things:

Hays County, Kyle, and Buda need to change their ordinances to match ours
They need to market animals at events
Consider participation with PALS to address pet overpopulation

Of course, these other jurisdictions could come back with amendments, which we’d consider. We’re not ordering them to adopt our version so much as asking them to consider this first version. But at some point, the ordinances need to match.

…

Item 16: School Resource Officers (SROs)

SROs are a joint collaboration between the city and the school district. This is the yearly re-upping of the contract.

There are a few proposed changes:

Maybe the contract should last two years, instead of one year?
Maybe the contract can be renewed by administrative approval, instead of coming to council?
(Some others, but these are the ones that got discussed.)

Alyssa Garza makes the case that it should be discussed every year. She’s actually mostly on board with the program, but says she’s only gotten to this place by having lots of detailed conversations every year.

Saul Gonzales agrees.

Jane Hughson also agrees, and adds that the renewal should really occur in the summer, before the new school year starts.

Mark Gleason and Matthew Mendoza are both peeved by the discussion.

Mark: we’re wasting everyone’s time! I just want to bring stability to the program!

Matthew: We should stay in our lanes! This is school board business!

(They both sure do have a lot more trust and faith in policing than I do.)

The vote: Should the contract last one year or two years?

One year: Shane Scott, Alyssa Garza, Jane Hughson, Saul Gonzales
Two years: Jude Prather, Mark Gleason, Matthew Mendoza

So it’ll be one year.

The vote: Should the contract come to council? Or can it be renewed by administration?

Council: Everybody except Jude Prather
Admin: Jude Prather

I’m going to call shenanigans on Jude Prather here. This boy recuses himself all the time. He recused himself during the animal shelter discussion ten minutes ago! He recused during a discussion on equity cabinets, the first Lindsey Street Apartments discussion, an environmental Interlocal Agreement with Texas State, and many others. Usually it’s because it involves Hays County, and he’s employed with Hays County, or it involves veterans, and he works with veterans, or it involves Texas State, and his wife works for Texas State. (It’s not a bad thing. He builds a fence around the law.)

Anyway, Jude has a legit conflict of interests on SROs – his wife is actually the director of the organization that trains SROs. This is a literal conflict of interest! He did not recuse himself.

It didn’t affect the vote, and Jude isn’t running for re-election, so I’m not too fussed. But it’s still a thing.

Overall vote to renew the SRO contract:

Yes: everyone
No: no one

Alyssa says it’s the first SRO contract she’s voted in favor of.

….

One more note: In years past, Max Baker and Alyssa Garza kept asking for the SRO survey data, and it never materialized.

This year, it was here! Good governance in action.

How do middle schoolers at Goodnight and Miller feel about cops in their schools?