Citizen Comment:
- One speaker spoke on some one-off issues – closing Cheatham street, lending police for football games, etc.
- A second speaker talked about the utility rate hikes. Specifically, he told Council that we should have separate rates for rich people.
This connects to a thought I’ve had. We do kind of have separate rates for rich people!
Take water as an example:
As you use more water, the water gets more expensive. This is good! It incentivizes people to use less water.
Right now, we’re raising utilities 5% across the board. If Council had wanted to, they could have tinkered with these marginal rates. But I bet it gets complicated, fast.
(Electricity doesn’t have tiered brackets like this, though. )
….
Not exactly Citizen Comment, but a general concern from a community member: the San Marcos Housing authority put out a statement saying that they were going to open up the waitlist for housing vouchers on Wednesday morning.
So everyone showed up! Apparently something like 250 people turned in pre-applications for housing vouchers that were supposed to open up on Wednesday morning. A bunch of people even spent the night outside the Housing Authority, in order to be there when the doors opened at 8:30. There was supposed to be a lottery to accept new applications.
And…. it just didn’t happen. The Housing Authority did not actually accept any applications. All the people needing housing just got sent away.
I don’t know what went wrong, but I guarantee there’s a throughline between having chronically underfunded housing assistance for decades, and this kind of mess. And Texas especially relishes underfunding programs for the poor.
….
Item 1: New City Hall steering committee
Last time we had a big song and dance about the composition of the committee. Should we do things the way we always do them? Or should the DEI coordinator steer us in a more equitable direction?
Here’s what the DEI coordinator says at the beginning of the conversation:
A good general principle is that the composition of your committee should match the composition of San Marcos. So you look at things like race, gender, ethnicity, and try to match the overall population of San Marcos. (As your friendly marxist blogger, I’d toss wealth on that list, too. Socioeconomic status is should be included in DEI initiatives. Poor people are underrepresented!)
Here’s what Council settles on:
- Each councilmember will pick two community members to be on the committee
- The mayor and two councilmembers will be on the committee
- The committee will have some specific roles filled:
- Someone from P&Z
- From the library board
- Someone representing the disability community
- SMRF representative
- Texas State representative
- Downtown association rep
- Chamber of commerce rep.
- Two people from Rio Vista neighborhood
So depending on how much overlap there is between 1 and 3, there could be as few as 17 members or as many as 26 members.
The DEI coordinator tentatively pipes up: “The more prescriptive we are with roles, the harder it will be to achieve the DEI goals.”
What she means is that the Library Board, P&Z, Texas State admin, SMRF, the Downtown organization, and Chamber of Commerce are generally less diverse than San Marcos as a whole. The more you stack your steering committee with folks from these organizations, the harder it will be to make the composition of your steering committee match with the composition of San Marcos.
Jane misunderstands what the DEI coordinator means, and says, “Inclusion of these partners doesn’t mean exclusion of others! We’re not excluding anyone.”
She also says (tellingly), “This just follows the pattern of how we do appointments in San Marcos.”
It does follow the pattern! Councilmembers pick people they know and put them on committees. This is how power perpetuates itself. This is why you have to deliberately not follow the pattern of how we do appointments in San Marcos, if you want change.
The plan is to collect applications, and then have councilmembers select their two special besties from the pool.
Anyone can apply! Would YOU like to give your two cents on the new city hall? Submit an application here, why dontcha? They’re due in 30 days. (The application is not up yet, but I’ll edit this when it goes live.)
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Item 20: Parking by permit
The good people of Sturgeon are fed up with non-residents parking on their street.
Sturgeon is this street, in Blanco Gardens:
They filed a petition to make the street permit parking, so only residents could park there. This is the area they want permitted:
My guess is they’re either sick of college students or river-goers parking there.
To be honest, I hate this kind of thing. Everyone pays for roads! We don’t own the curb in front of our houses. It’s not yours.
Occasionally, there is an extreme situation puts an undue burden on residents. I can understand that. But here? Seven of those parcels are empty! Why are we banning the public from parking in front of empty lots? It makes me cranky. (All the tan lots are empty in the diagram above.)
I just don’t like the privatization of something that’s public. Public spaces belong to the public, end of story.
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Items 21-23: 51 acres off McCarty and 123
This bit is getting annexed and zoned:
It’s right by the high school, here:
Everybody knows we need more commerce on the east side of town. For years, residents have asked for this.
(Quick sidebar: But don’t forget! Council removed commerce from Cottonwood Creek here, and then two months later Council removed commerce from the giant future development on 123 here. For Cottonwood Creek, residents wrote letters and showed up to say that they wanted to keep the commercial! And yet Council killed it anyway, because the developer asked nicely.)
Anyway, in general there’s very few stores east of I-35. These guys are committing to putting commerce on this corner:
It’s being zoned Commercial.
The rest of it is being zoned CD-4:
CD-4 is a Character District. That means that city staff is really hoping it will look like this:
Little shops mixed with apartments, and oodles of charm.
But it actually usually looks like this:
Not terrible, and the housing is needed, but not quite as charming as Sesame Street.
….
You know what would be fun? Dusting off our five criteria for zoning! C’mon, guys, let’s see if we agree with our councilmembers.
1. Price Tag to the City: Will it bring in taxes that pay for itself, over the lifespan of the infrastructure and future repair? How much will it cost to extend roads, utilities, on fire and police coverage, on water and wastewater?
Who knows! No one ever provides this information!
But my educated guess is yes. The main problem is with single family detached homes – they don’t pay enough taxes to cover their roads and services. Since this will have apartments and commercial, it should be fine. It’s also along existing roads with existing utilities and coverage areas.
2. Housing stock: How long will it take to build? How much housing will it provide? What is the forecasted housing deficit at that point? Is it targeting a price-point that serves what San Marcos needs?
We also have no info here! But it doesn’t sound like giant $500K McMansions. It sounds like apartments plus stores.
3. Environment: Is it on the aquifer? Is it in a flood zone? Will it create run off into the river?Are we looking at sprawl? Is it uniformly single-family homes?
Environmentally sound. Not near the river. Not sprawl. Not all single family homes.
Social: Is it meaningfully mixed income? Is it near existing SMCISD schools and amenities?
I doubt it will be mixed income. It is near schools, and hopefully near amenities.
The San Marxist Special: Is it a mixed-income blend of single family houses, four-plexes, and eight-plexes, all mixed together? With schools, shops, restaurants, and public community space sprinkled throughout?
I don’t know how charming this will be. We can hope.
So overall: I approve. It seems more good than not.
Council does, too. It all passes 6-0. (Shane Scott is absent.)
“YAY COMMERCE!” council cheers.
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Items 24-27: All the budget and tax rate final details. (Discussed here and here previously.)
First things first! The good people at City Hall were able to give me the General Fund breakdown.
I put together this side-by-side comparison for last year and this year:
Budgets are complicated. I don’t have any great takeaways here.
…
Next: We’re taxing ourselves less than we thought we were. We made an error in an obscure tax computation, and just now fixed it.
Here’s the quick version: You’ve got your existing taxable buildings, and you’ve got your new builds. Texas state law cares about the total amount you’re getting each year from the existing taxable buildings. (So you’re ignoring tax revenue from new buildings, for now.)
Is the total revenue from existing buildings going up or down? Sometimes it goes up because you raised taxes. Other times it goes up because your housing prices are going up. Either way, you’ve got to jump through some extra hoops if that total is going up.
We drew up our budget, and we thought it was going up, but…. <drumroll> it turns out it’s going down! Hooray? Since we didn’t change our tax rate, that means home values are falling.
(Jude: THIS IS A REALLY BIG DEAL! THIS NEVER HAPPENS!
Mark: IT’S THE GROWTH!)
….
You know me: I just always have to rant a little bit about taxes. (I swear this will be a very tiny soapbox. Two minutes, tops.)
Taxes are good! That’s how you fund your government, and take care of your community. The problem is that we won’t tax wealthy people in Texas. First off, the poorest people are paying the most taxes:
And this is worse than in other states!
Notice that Texas is one of the states on the left part of that graph.
People complain about high property taxes, but those aren’t the unfair part. The unfair part is the sales tax. (Both state and local.) Sales taxes really are the worst! Poor people end up paying a much higher percentage of their income than wealthy people. Literally, it’s capitalism for the poor and socialism for the wealthy.
End rant! I promised you I’d keep it short.
…
Anyway: only one person speaks at citizen comment and nothing gets debated. The end! We have a new budget and next year’s tax rate.
The vote: 5-1. Alyssa Garza votes against everything, presumably because of the utility rate hikes.
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Item 28: Mowing, landscaping, and litter around city buildings. It is a giant task.
We contract out parts of it to Easter Seals of Central Texas, to the tune of $1,432,702.54.
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Item 29: Purgatory Creek Channel improvements
We had a whole workshop all about the Purgatory Creek channel improvements last time! This meeting, we’re kicking off $3,281,773.35 towards engineering for Phase 1.
Saul Gonzales asks, “There’s a bunch of stagnant water in the side channels through Dunbar. Will this help with that?”
Answer: Sort of yes! Part of the project is raising some of the low-water crossings. That is a major reason why water can’t drain downstream. But also sort of no! This is supposed to recreate natural channels, and they do pool some.
The city applied for grants to cover a lot of the costs. We should find out next month if we get them. If we get them, we’ll start construction next year.
….
Item 32: Filling a bunch of vacancies on different committees.
There was one moment that ticked me off. There’s a vacancy on the Animal Shelter Advisory Committee. We only had one application.
Matthew Mendoza pointed out that on the application, this volunteer stated that they have only lived in San Marcos for two months. Matthew is uncomfortable with this, and Jane agreed. Matthew likes it when people have lived here longer. They decided to re-open applications and see if anyone else applies.
GUYS! Stop this rudeness. First off, you should be welcoming to new people.
Second off, if this were a vacancy on P&Z or the new City Hall steering committee? Sure, require 5 year residency. You want people with some roots and community background. (I guess.)
But that’s not this. This is the ANIMAL SHELTER. A new person moved to town and wants to volunteer their time to help the doggos! We should be appreciative, but instead we’re crapping on them for not having roots in the area. That’s dumb.
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Item 33: What night will city council meet, on election week?
The election is on a Tuesday. You don’t want to hold a council meeting the same day as an election. We don’t want to get in the way of anyone voting.
So should the council meeting be shifted to Monday or Wednesday? Historically we switch to the Monday. But Jane Hughson is suggesting that this year, council should meet on the Wednesday instead.
I want to emphasize two things:
- When I say that Jane is good at details, this is a perfect example of what I mean. She explained her thinking: “Suppose I am a community member who doesn’t know that the meeting was moved, and I show up on Tuesday. If the meeting already passed on Monday, then I’m out of luck. But if the meeting is not till Wednesday, I can come back tomorrow.”
This is really thoughtful and detail-oriented. Jane Hughson is unusually good at this sort of thing.
- It’s worse for me, your friendly blogger. I need every last minute to crank out these posts! If the meeting is on Wednesday, then I get crunched, which gives me a sad. But in my heart of hearts, I know Jane is right.
The San Marxist 