The hot issues are all in the workshops this week: the budget and the river parks. Are we fencing the park off?! Kind of yes! (Also a lot of little items. Long meeting this week.)
Here we go!
Hours 0:00 – 3:25: Citizen comment, the annual survey of the homeless population, and the charter review commission
Hours 3:25 – 4:28: Lots of little items. Downtown funding, an alcohol permit, three SMPD small items, and who is rocking the best council ‘fit?
So much quieter than it’s been. Only seven speakers! Only twenty minutes long!
Here are the topics:
Four speakers: You should have voted for the Gaza ceasefire resolution!
Two speakers: No on the ceasefire! Also we support SMPD and public safety!
One speaker (Rob Roark, of KZSM fame): The Charter Review Commission worked hard and has some good recommendations. Hear them out!
….
Item 1: Homeless population PiT Count
“PiT” stands for Point in Time. Nationwide, everyone picks one day in January where everyone tries to get a physical headcount of how many people are homeless on that one specific day. This is how you get funding from HUD.
We did our PiT count on January 23rd this year. This is the report on it.
….
What counts as unhoused, according to HUD?
What doesn’t?
It’s not a perfect measure!
But it’s not worthless, either.
Here’s how the numbers have shaken out over the past five years:
The blue is a subset of the orange. Those are people who appear to be homeless, but we weren’t able to talk with them.
The vast majority of homeless people of Hays County are in San Marcos:
This is partially because the Hays County Women’s Shelter, Southside Shelter, and emergency hotel housing programs are all located here. But also partially because we’re just a much poorer, more precarious community than the rest of Hays County.
What does Council think?
The speaker makes a plea: can you help us get the county to work on its emergency response plan? For example, during the freeze, their plan was “Send everyone to Southside.”
They decide to send the issue to the Homelessness Committee to think about harder.
…
Item 2: Charter Review Commission
Every four years, we take a fine-tooth comb to the city charter, and look for improvements. Council appointed a commission of residents, back in January. They met weekly all spring, and returned back with a list of recommendations.
Council takes these recommendations, and either rejects them, accepts them, or puts them on the ballot.
Today is just the rough draft. Basically, they’re weeding out anything that they hate. Anything that Council likes will come back in formal, legal language, and then they can argue about the details.
There are 15 total proposed amendments:
Better pronoun use
Notifications on social media
Mayor gets 4 year terms
Tweaking the number of yearly council meetings
Cap on councilmembers zooming in to meetings
Approving council meetings minutes on time
Buying hard copies of city code, grammar tweaks
Auditing anyone who gets public funds
Financial disclosures for referendums and initiatives
More time to file referendum petitions
More time to verify citizen petitions
Change P&Z residency requirement
Review the comprehensive plan a little less often
State budgets using plain, clear language
Tweak some headings
Study single-member districts and launch education and conversation, but don’t take any major action right now.
Warning: This item takes about 2.5 hours to wade through. I’ll do my best to keep it snappy.
Let’s dive in.
Everyone is fine with this.
Everyone like this, too.
This is the first contentious one. This is about election turnout. Presidential elections have the biggest voter turnout. Midterm elections are the next-biggest. The odd years are called off-year elections, and they have the lowest turnouts.
For example, the committee chair read out the mayor vote total for the past four years:
2021: there were 3,800 votes for mayor (off-year)
2022: there were 17,000 for mayor (Midterm election)
2023: there were 3,900 votes (off-year)
2024: there were 23,000 votes (Presidential election)
So the key is those extra 10-20K voters who only show up for big elections: do you think they will vote for your candidate? If so, then you want to align elections to land on presidential years. If not, then you like elections to land on off-years.
The Charter Review Commission is arguing that we should switch to 4 year terms, aligned with Presidential elections. Here are their reasons:
It’s very expensive to run for mayor. Lengthening the term may induce more people to decide it’s worth it.
Two year terms means you’re always campaigning. This may mean you’re overly beholden to your donors.
We should prioritize all voters, not just the well-connected ones.
Often times subcommittees take more than two years to get their work done, so a mayor can’t complete their campaign promises in one term.
What does Council think?
Jane goes first:
She likes 2 year terms. The mayor should have to earn the votes of the people often.
She proposes splitting the difference and going with 3 year terms.
It’s easier to run in odd years because there’s less competition for attention.
It’s cheaper to run in odd years.
The conversation kind of deteriorates. People keep making opposite assertions that directly contradict each other:
Off-year elections are cheap, because there’s less competition!
Off-year elections are expensive, because it’s harder to get donations!
Off-year elections are easier, because it’s quiet so you can get more engagement!
Big years are easier, because you can piggy-back on the extra opportunities and everyone is paying attention!
These things can all be true – it just depends which voters you’re talking about. If you try to get students to turn out, then you like the big years. If you rely on Old San Marcos and personal networks, then off-years are easier.
More contradictions:
People may not want to commit to 2 year terms, because they only get a year before they have to start campaigning!
People may not want to commit to 4 year terms, because they may feel like it’s too long for something they’re not sure about!
Big years are harder, because the ballot gets so long! People don’t want to check all those boxes.
Small years are harder, because people don’t want to make a special trip to go vote!
Everyone’s just making random guesses – no one actually knows how these factors play out.
Alyssa: I strongly prefer 4 year terms. Saul: Two years is better, for accountability. Lorenzo: 2 or 4 year terms. Matthew: 2 or 3 year terms. Shane: 4 years. Amanda: I have issues with all the choices. But I guess 4 years.
This one will go to the people! You get to vote on this, in November! (Which is admittedly an off-year election.)
…
Spontaneous side quest: What about the rest of council? Should there be 4 year terms for all council members?
This is not controversial. Sometimes it’s hard to have two meetings in November, because of elections, and in January, because it means staff has to prepare a meeting over the holidays. We’re allowed to have as many extra meetings as we want. Everyone’s fine with this.
SIGH. This is dumb. This is about former council member Max Baker.
During Covid, everyone else came back in person, and he kept zooming in for an extra year or so. He was also a pretty contentious person who argued a lot, and pissed a lot of people off.
Would he have gotten along better with the rest of council if he’d been in person? Who knows. But many people believe that him zooming in made everything worse. Anyway, the voters did not re-elect Max, so the situation resolved itself.
In my opinion, that’s how it should go. Do something that pisses off a lot of people, and let the voters decide whether or not they approve. Democracy!
This recommendation is not that. It’s about micromanaging who zooms in for which kinds of reasons, but simultaneously pretending not to micromanage these things. “We trust you to give honest reasons, but you’re only allowed to give three bad reasons per year before you get an unspecified consequence.”
Look, these things are all true:
Meetings go better when people are in person
People can have good reasons to zoom in.
People can have bad reasons to zoom in, and you can’t tell the difference
Do not get into the business of policing how conscientious someone is at their job. You’ll end up writing a fractal maze of tedious, detailed rules. Extreme cases make bad policy.
Should this be a charter amendment?
Yes: Matthew Mendoza. No: Shane, Jane, Amanda, Saul, Alyssa, Lorenzo
Should Council discuss this further as an internal, lowkey rule?
Yes: Lorenzo, Amanda, Jane, Saul, Matthew No: Shane, Alyssa
Sure, that’s fine. It’s just weird to micromanage from the charter.
…
Heh. They have not updated City Council minutes since May 2022. Apparently there was some staff turnover, and it fell by the wayside.
This moves forwards.
Everyone is fine with this.
This one is odd. Basically, Council already puts a clause in its contracts that they can request audits like this. In practice, they almost never do.
The question is: do they need extra firm legal footing to do this? Should they put it in the charter, and authorize themselves with extra authority to do this thing we already do?
So it fails. I probably would have voted yes, though.
I liked this one, but the lawyer did say that it’s not really a Charter-level thing. The charter is like your constitution – it’s your high-level principles, but not your detailed little laws.
Yes: Saul, Jane, Matthew No: Alyssa, Shane, Amanda, Lorenzo
So this fails.
Council goes with this one.
Council goes with this one, too.
Keep five year residency: Jane, Saul, Shane, Matthew Shorten to three years: Alyssa, Lorenzo, Amanda
So this fails, and will not go on the ballot.
This just builds in flexibility, since it takes so many years to review a comprehensive plan.
Everyone on Council likes this! City Staff does not like this. The city manager is worried about how you balance formal legal language with plain, understandable language.
Jane Hughson has an example:
“Hotel occupancy taxes, utility revenues, and public private partnerships agreements currently secure self-supporting debt. In the event such amounts are insufficient to pay debt services, the city will be required to assess an ad valorem tax to pay such obligations.”
Can that be stated more clearly?
Probably the best practice is to keep the formal, legal language, but add in clear little summaries from time to time. This moves forward.
This is fine.
…
LAST ONE!
In other words, it’s too rushed to put single-member districts on the ballot. We should study and have community conversations about this, instead.
Do we want to have a conversation about this?
Yes to a conversation: Lorenzo, Amanda, Alyssa, Matthew, Jane No to even a conversation: Shane, Saul
Jane and Amanda are both pretty sure that they’re “No”s on single member districts. But they’re willing to have a conversation.
…
BUT WAIT! THERE’S ONE MORE!
Jane brings up one last issue: The Texas legislature might eliminate all local elections besides November. If something happens to a council member, you could have a vacancy for 10 or 11 months.
Do we want the option to have council appoint an interim, un-elected councilmember?
It sounds like most of council does not want this, but they decide to at least bring it back for a conversation.
“TIRZ” stands for Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone. We have 5 or 6 of these in San Marcos. This item is about the Downtown TIRZ, which covers this area:
This TIRZ started in 2011.
Here’s how a TIRZ works: In 2011, they appraised the value of all that property. Say it was appraised to be $100 million back in 2011. While the TIRZ runs, the city will only get taxes on the $100 million. As the property gets more valuable, the downtown will pay more taxes, but the extra taxes get put back into projects to make the downtown better.
So for example, suppose in 2018, the downtown is now worth $150 million. The city gets the taxes on the first $100 million, and the downtown gets the taxes on the next $50 million.
Here’s a little visual aid explaining this in the council packet:
The downtown TIRZ is actually a joint TIRZ with the county also knocking back some money. Here’s the actual amounts, if you’re curious:
This next bit did not get a lot of discussion:
My best guess is that everyone still wants the TIRZ to wrap up by 2027, and so we’re giving them a final boost to get across the finish line.
Here are the amounts they need to finish up the projects:
Anyway, it does not get much discussion, and passes unanimously:
The city is giving roughly $1 million to the downtown for projects this coming year.
I’m okay with the premise, but I’m uneasy that it didn’t get more discussion, in light of the massive budget cuts we’re incurring elsewhere. If we extended the TIRZ to 2028, could we have spread out $500K somewhere else?
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Item 22: CUP appeal
There’s this Holiday Inn, on the southbound frontage road, right before WonderWorld:
They have a little bar and grill inside:
The bar and grill serves alcohol. So they have to get a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) from the city.
Here’s how CUPs work: your first year open, you get a 1 year permit. After that, you get a 3 year permit, (There are a lot of extra details, but that’s the gist of it.)
These guys got their 1 year permit back in 2017, and then never came back.
Now: this is a really common, widespread problem in San Marcos, and P&Z and staff have been working to clean it up for awhile now. The city was sloppy about sending reminders, at times, and the businesses were sloppy about not coming in for their permits if no one was checking. So a ton of businesses fell behind.
Here’s the problem: there’s a fee attached to the CUP. (A couple hundred dollars?) The city doesn’t turn a profit, but it covers the cost of staff time and materials.
So the businesses that skip the CUPs for a decade – like these guys – are saving maybe $1000 over the businesses that follow the rules. It’s a little unfair.
P&Z handles this by making businesses pay off their delinquent CUPs. If you skipped 2 renewals, you’re going to get 2 6-month CUP permits. When you’re all caught up, you can go back to having 3-year CUPs.
That’s what happened to these guys. They skipped 2020 and 2023, so when they came in last August, they got their first make-up CUP, lasting 6 months. When they came back in March, they got their second make-up CUP, lasting 6 more months.
But this time they got pissed! So they appealed to Council. They want a full 3 year CUP, and they want a refund of $765.
Here’s the thing:
1. Is the bar right? Absoutely not! This is the standard that P&Z is applying everywhere. This is absolutely fair, and the bar is wrong. But….
2. Is this a good fight for City Council to pick? Hell no! Pick your battles. If someone is making a mountain out of this molehill, have the good sense to step out of their way.
Council steps out of their way and rewards the appeal.
I’m a little annoyed that Council fawns over them for being such good community members. There’s no need to kiss their ass when you’re the one doing them a favor. But Council fawns and preens over them. Whatever.
The vote: Should they get refunded the money that the rest of the business owners have to pay?
Haha. I probably would have voted “yes”, but my heart is with Matthew voting “no”.
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Item 12: Staffing study for SMPD
Chief Standridge came in 2022. Back then, SMPD did a staffing study, and decided that we needed a lot more police officers:
Then there was a violent crime spike in 2022, and so we freaked out and claimed that we needed a LOT more police, as fast as possible:
I would argue that our crime spike was actually part of a nationwide trend:
(From here.) As covid drifted back in time, crime rates have settled back to baseline in San Marcos, as well.
Council has been spending all its extra money adding extra police and fire fighters. Back then, Alyssa was the only progressive voice on council. But now she’s got company. So do we really need to keep adding police officers?
We’ve decided to do another policing staff study. We are hiring these guys to tell us whether we need more police officers or not.
Is council willing to spend $116K on a new staffing study for the police, from that consulting company?
Amanda: the timeline looks rushed. How are you going to get community input by July 2025? Answer: It’s actually supposed to be five months, not two months.
Alyssa: Why these guys? Answer: They did our Marshal staffing study. We liked them. They didn’t tell us to hire more marshals, but they had good ideas how to move people around.
Saul: This is a lot of money. Can we see the bidding process? Answer: We didn’t have a bidding process, but next time we can do that. Sorry about that.
The vote:
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Item 4: More SMPD!
Here’s what they want to do:
Should we spend $938K on police station improvements?
Short answer: Yes, because this decision was already made, and now we’re just following through. This is the building and the bullet trap for the shooting range. (We saw the bullet trap earlier here.)
(Did this item get a robust discussion earlier, when it was approved in June 2023? Absolutely not. But what’s done is done.)
Amanda: Will there be any more asks associated with this project? Answer: Possibly to resurface the parking lots. But we don’t expect anything unexpected to turn up when we break ground.
Saul: You do know this is an old graveyard, right? Answer: No, sir, I did not know that. Saul: I’m just kidding.
That was the best moment of the night right there, for sure. I laughed so hard at that.
The vote:
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Item 10-11: EVEN MORE SMPD!
SMPD is applying for a two grants related to license plate readers. This is supposed to relate to vehicle theft and stealing catalytic converters. Total, these two grants are about $183K. SMPD needs Council’s blessing to apply for the grants.
(This is not the same thing as the license plate scanner saga that we’ve been following here, here, and here.)
Amanda: Didn’t the deadline pass in April? Answer: We got a special exception, because they know that city councils don’t always meet on schedule.
Amanda grills Chief Standridge over the date, and Lorenzo gets snippy over the time wasted. If you enjoy petty council member exchanges, go here and start watching at about 4:08:50.
The vote:
I am 90% sure that Alyssa verbally stated her vote was actually a “no”, but it was hard to hear.
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Item 24, 25: Tinkering with boards and commissions, and filling vacancies.
There’s a vacancy on P&Z, left by the passing of Jim Garber. Council elects Josh Paselk to be the new commissioner.
…
One last note:
Everyone makes an effort to dress professionally for council meetings:
But is Amanda rocking a maroon three piece suit?!
Is this a councilmember, or is this Andre 3000?? I appreciate good drip, as the kids say.
Just three speakers. Two in favor of fencing off the river and making people enter through managed entry points.
San Marcos River Foundation Director (Virginia Parker): Last weekend, the river was busier than it ever was last year. Water quality is terrible. Lots of glass and styrofoam and trash. Swimmers get stuck under tubes. It’s dangerous. Residents don’t want to go on the summer weekends, but we’re the ones who pay. Monday’s clean up was worse than any clean up last year. In favor of managed access.
Board member of Eyes of the San Marcos River. In favor of managed access. Clean up does not suffice. You must protect the river. Monday morning clean up was astonishing. Piles of glass bottles in water. Cypress trees stuffed full of cans. Trashed tubes everywhere.
One speaker on the AI Data Center:
3. The data center is going to be built, either way! Your choice is this: is the data center going to be in the city – regulated and taxed – or the county – unregulated, untaxed? It’s not bitcoin mining, it’s LEED Certified!
Workshop 1: Fiscal Budget Bad News
Council starts planning the budget in January, and passes the budget at the end of September. Here’s where we are in the process:
So we’re starting to get our tax revenue estimates, but we don’t know for sure how much we’ll get until the end of July.
Ok… this sounds worrisome…
Ruh-roh, Shaggy.
So basically, our budget is has a big gash in it? We can balance the budget with a bandaid, or we can stitch it up and balance the budget responsibly.
One hurts a lot more, but leaves us in better shape longterm. Yikes.
Good lord. It is not a good sign when your city staff is putting melodramatic visuals like this in your slide show.
…
So why is this happening?!
Ok, so property values are falling from their post-Covid peak. This is good in some ways – it’s getting a little more affordable to live here! But it does mean that the city gets less property tax income.
Next, we didn’t build as much this past year, so we’re not adding as many new properties to the tax roll as we have in the past. Also sales tax is down, and inflation is up.
And yet, we keep growing:
Our budget stayed flat while inflation took a bite out of everything:
Amanda: Did all departments hold their budgets flat? Answer: there were some exceptions last year, due to existing contracts, but no exceptions this year. All departments held flat this year.
Mid-year, the city reduced spending by $100K, across all departments.
Alyssa: How did you all reduce $100K? Answer: They looked at the unspent budgets over the past three years, and used that to proportionally allocate the cuts.
These are not one-time cuts – they’re permanent cuts. But departments are allowed to make requests for reinstatements.
So we have less money to spend per resident:
…
Some details on the tax revenue
We get both sales tax and property tax. Let’s take these one at a time:
This chart is a little complicated. Each of those numbers is its own computation. So you see where it says “December 24, -2.3%”? What that means is that they added up the twelve months in all of 2023, and added up all twelve months in 2024, and found that the 2024 year was 2.3% less than the 2023 year.
Some cities are up, some are down:
Here’s who does the most business in town, and hence pays the most sales tax:
And here’s how much different industries have tanked recently:
Dang.
Onto property taxes:
(This isn’t the clearest visual aid, perhaps? I’d probably separate the orange line and the blue bars into two separate graphs.)
Basically, the total property values increased a lot from 2022 to 2023. Then they started slowing down from 2023 to 2024 and 2025. And now, heading into 2026, they’re going backwards.
This is a big bummer.
We’ve built some new stuff, so that helps bring in more revenue:
This is again a wee bit confusing, but let’s take a crack at it:
This is the difference from year-to-year. If it’s positive, then you got more money than last year. If it’s negative, you got less money than last year. You can see that lately, blue has gone negative. Next year, it’s projected that blue is so negative that it outweighs the green.
Lorenzo: Do we have any commercial products on the horizon? City Manager: Yes… you already heard from the AI dude. But there’s a lot more in the pipeline. Buccee’s, IKEA, HEB, multifamily, warehouse buildings. Lots of stuff will get added to the payroll over the next few years.
Ok, let’s shift to tax payers.
We have not raised the tax rate in the past few years. But property values have fallen. If we want to bring in the same amount of money, we would have to charge a little more:
So here, the tax rate jumps by 4%, and the average person pays the same amount in property taxes. This is called the “No New Revenue” rate.
We already made some midyear cutbacks, because we got reports that things were going badly:
Also yearly fee reviews.
Here’s where this leaves us:
Ok, all that shaves us down from $12 million over budget to $1 million over budget. (The blue “$3 million shift” is balancing the budget without being structural about that.)
Also ARPA and other Covid money is going away in 2027. That $1.4 is money the city will have to pick up.
How much does it help to raise taxes?
So each cent increase helps a lot.
…
So now let’s go back to this conversation:
Are we going to take the bandaid on the left, or the painful, responsible path on the right?
Note that in Option 4, everyone’s taxes stay flat. The extra $900K comes from new buildings. It would help offset inflation and implement council priorities.
….
Look, I believe in government. I believe that the role of government is to redistribute wealth and use it to solve collective problems. Starving your government makes inequality worse.
I get that San Marcos has endemic poverty, and people need every possible cent to make ends meet. People resent taxes. But I still believe in them. So I would vote for options 3 or 4.
….
Hang in there! There’s still a whole ‘nother workshop on fencing off the river!
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What’s not in the budget?
So the departments made $100K in permanent cuts. They’re allowed to request it back, though. These are scrutinized to see if they’re “needs” or “wants”. (Council asks to see a list of all these cuts, as well.)
What else isn’t in the budget?
Remember back in January, when Council dreamed big? We got all excited about things like:
Tenants Bill of Rights and advocacy program
Office of Violence Prevention
Increasing HSAB funding for social programs
None of those are in the budget yet.
….
One last thing: Back in January, we talked about how San Marcos was going to move towards a participatory budget model. The idea is to get the community input, and particularly those people who generally are disenfranchised by government. (In other words, don’t just go and ask all of Mayor Jane’s BFFs what they think about the budget.)
How’s that been going?
Staff did three things:
Consult with the Neighborhood Commission
Have a bunch of Dream Sessions
Have an online survey
Amanda and Alyssa are FURIOUS over this. All of the outreach methods have gotten hijacked by the same old people who always have the ear of Council. This did not connect with the people on the east side.
For example, here’s where the survey responders live:
See that densest cluster in the southwest? That would be Kissing Tree, ie a bunch of wealthy old white retirees. That is not who we mean when we say “get the input of hard-to-reach San Marcos residents”.
In the city’s defense, this is an incredibly difficult problem to solve. What you have to do is form relationships with community leaders in your hard-to-access regions – church leaders, barber shops and hair salons, etc. It is extremely time-intensive.
…
Time for Council direction! Roughly speaking, which road do we want to take?
More specifically, which scenario is Council leaning towards?
This isn’t a final, binding decision. But you don’t want city staff to go in a completely different direction from what Council is willing to approve. You want staff to prepare options that are aligned with what Council is thinking.
Lorenzo has a good question: is that extra $900K enough address the budget requests and council initiatives? Answer: Yes, it’s roughly enough to get us to a stable place, and to implement council priorities:
Tenants Bill of Rights and advocacy program
Office of Violence Prevention
Increasing HSAB funding for social programs
Council direction
Jane: Somewhere between #3 and #4. Lorenzo: #4 Shane: #4 Alyssa: #4, as long as the extra is dedicated to social services, public facing programs, and council priorities. I have to be able to explain this to my neighbors. Matthew: #3 Amanda: between #3 and #4. People must see tangible benefits to their tax dollars. That can only happen through the tenants rights and HSAB funding, ie council initiatives. If it doesn’t include council initiatives, I can’t justify this to my constituents. Saul: #3
The arrests are low, because the marshals can’t take the time to arrest someone.
We saw these sad photos from the river last year, too:
and
It’s very depressing.
Trying to keep up with the crowds is super labor intensive:
Also there are a ton of volunteers, like the The Eyes of the San Marcos River, that show up weekly and pick up the massive amount of litter left behind.
Basically, San Marcos residents have stopped using the river on the weekends. It’s used by tourists from San Antonio, Houston, Austin, and other out-of-towners:
But we don’t collect any tax revenue from them, because they don’t stop at the restaurants or spend the night.
So residents are footing the bill, while the river is over-used by others to the point of destruction.
…
What happened is that there used to be lots of free river parks in Central Texas. But one-by-one, they all got fenced off and started charging admission. This put the pressure on families to travel further and further to get some free recreation and relief from the summer heat.
We’re the last park that is still free. So now we’re getting more people than our river can handle.
This is a collective action problem, specifically a kind called the tragedy of the commons. People have destroyed many, many finite natural resources throughout history. It would be great not to add our river to that list.
I hate this situation so much. I want people to have free recreation to escape the Texas heat! I want families to have fun together! And yet we absolutely have to keep our river healthy and clean.
(The actual solution is that Central Texas needs a lot more free water recreation options available for residents in the summer. The heat is brutal. If we had a functional state government that tried to improve things for their residents, they could solve that problem.)(If my aunt had wheels, she’d be a wagon.)
…
So what are we doing differently this year?
First off, for holiday weekends:
blocking off Cheatham on either end. We started doing this on holiday weekends last year, and it helped keep people safer.
Next: getting the shuttles out of the neighborhoods:
So now the Lion’s Club shuttle takes the I-35 frontage road, instead of going down Riverside.
…
Those are both good, but what about the BIG problems?
After last fall, Council was timidly open to the idea of fencing off the river and charging admission. But they had lots of questions. It was very preliminary.
But then it hasn’t come up since then.
So this was kind of a surprise! The park staff want to try some stuff out this year:
WHOA. That’s this weekend! This is pretty short notice!
The plan:
They want to test out fencing off this one part of the park, by the falls:
You would only be able to get in at those four green entries. You’d have to talk to someone, who reminds you of the rules, like the ban on charcoal grills, and single-use containers, and alcohol.
Maybe we could we keep things from getting less out of hand?
….
I think this is a pretty good idea? I’m surprised that it materialized so fast, but this is a good test run.
…
City staff also floats the idea of charging admission to out-of-towners on weekends? Not residents, just tourists:
Residents would have to register for a pass.
…
Also they want to be able to tow people more easily:
Right now, only Marshals or police can get a vehicle towed. They want to make it easier for the Parking Enforcement Techs to get a vehicle towed, so that the Marshals can keep dealing with the park.
…
What does Council think?
Amanda and Alyssa both: This is all super rushed. This is way too fast. We also have major concerns about staffing – there were some marshals that were overly aggressive and problematic?
City manager Stephanie Reyes: The park marshal that was in the news was fired. But listen: it’s super dangerous there. We’ve gotten very lucky, but please take this seriously.
Jane: All these decisions have to come back, though, with precise definitions.
Parks Director: You can defer the fee. We don’t need to charge people. We just want to have the fence so that we can talk to people before they go in. You can send someone to go put contraband in their car if you catch them on their way in, but once they’ve set up and are midway through the day, it gets dicey.
Saul: Do we own the fence? Answer: no, we’re renting it. But it’s rolled in to the cost of the Porta-potties. We got a great deal.
…
There are three questions for Council to answer:
Do they want to try fencing off Rio Vista park?
Do they want to charge admission to out-of-towners?
Do they want parking techs to be allowed to get vehicles towed?
Let’s take these one at a time:
Fencing off Rio Vista Park, around the falls?
Yes: Saul, Jane, Amanda, Lorenzo, Shane, Matthew No: Alyssa, who says she cannot sign onto anything without more details.
I think this is a good idea.
2. Charging an admission fee for out-of-towners?
No. There is not much appetite for charging a fee immediately. There are too many unknown details about how exactly we’d pre-register residents.
What about having a future conversation about charging an admission fee?
Yes to a conversation: Saul, Jane, Lorenzo, Amanda, Matthew No: Alyssa, Shane
3. Parking techs allowed to get someone towed?
Yes: Jane, Matthew, Lorenzo No: Saul , Amanda, Shane, Alyssa
So this fails.
…
We’re also moving forward with paid parking at the Lion’s Club:
So the idea is that it’s free for residents, as long as you register ahead of time:
You can also register online.
…
The workshop ran way over time. They didn’t start the council meeting until almost 7 pm.
Just one topic this week at City Council: the Ceasefire Resolution in Gaza. The meeting ran till almost 2 am. I feel like I really earned my “watching council so you don’t have to” stripes this week.
Here it is:
Hours 0:00 – 7:24: Should San Marcos approve a call for a ceasefire for the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza?
In writing this up, I mostly dropped my usual breezy kidding-around shtick. There’s just too much anger and intensity on this subject for me to poke the bear.
Antisemitism is a real problem, but calling for a cease-fire is not automatically antisemitic.
The US is morally culpable in this specific war because we fund weapons for Israel, in a way that we don’t for other wars around the world. (We fund Ukraine, but they’re not the aggressor, of course.)
Why now?
Activists have been calling for this for about a year. About 100 cities across the US passed ceasefire resolutions last spring. However, in San Marcos, it takes two council members or just the mayor to put an item on the agenda. Alyssa was the only council member interested. So it didn’t happen.
In November, we elected Amanda. Now there were two – Alyssa and Amanda – who could put this on the agenda. So they did, and here we are.
At the April 15th meeting, the ceasefire resolution was just a discussion item. The vote was “Do we want to bring this forward for a formal vote, or not?” That passed. So today is the formal vote on the actual resolution.
The key is that last paragraph. He is threatening to withhold state grants and terminate existing grants if we pass this ordinance. That is a wild escalation.
And from the assistant attorney general:
That’s basically “here’s how we can strip your city of lots of funds”.
…
Then there was the backlash-to-the-backlash, from Greg Casar:
And this from a bunch of local lawyers:
Which basically says “get the fuck outta here with that unconstitutional bullshit,” but in legalese.
That’s all that I caught wind of, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t more out there.
…
Some Pre-game Analysis
The calculus has changed from the last meeting to this meeting, because of these letters from Abbott and the Attorney General. Let’s separate out some issues:
1. Morality. Let’s be very clear: the activists have the moral upper hand.
The sheer scale of obliteration, death, and starvation in Palestine is far disproportionate to the terrorism waged by Hamas, and the toll is mostly borne by civilians. This is a moral atrocity.
2. Strategy, Part 1:
What is the cost-benefit analysis of passing a San Marcos ceasefire resolution? Does it move the needle on the causes we care about? What resources does it cost to pass this?
3. Strategy, Part 2:
The bullying: How do Greg Abbott’s threats affect the calculus?
There are two main issues:
Free speech and first amendment rights. This is clearly protected speech, and Abbott’s threats are most likely illegal. Threats to your freedom of speech should be taken very seriously.
Risking city funding for San Marcos residents. If you take on that a legal fight, you are risking the grants and funding that the people of San Marcos depend on. You are also putting the cost of a legal fight on San Marcos, and there is no guarantee that we’d get a fair ruling.
How do you balance standing up for your first amendment rights against risking grant funding for struggling San Marcos residents? Both are incredibly important.
Listen: either decision carries consequences. This is not an easy thing to balance. Anyone who says this choice is obvious or easy is being overly reductionist.
We’ll get into this during the council discussion.
…
This brings us to last Tuesday’s meeting!
Citizen Comment
By my count, there were 125 speakers. They each get three minutes, so you can see how this can add up. My notes have 93 speakers in favor, 29 speakers opposed, and two where I just could not tell which side they were on. (One speaker spoke on the AI Data Center proposal.)
Main Arguments in favor are roughly:
we are culpable in this mass brutality. Therefore we must speak out.
This is a local issue because clearly local people are passionate about it.
There have been about a hundred other cities that have passed resolutions, and the international community has condemned the war
This is a first amendment fight. Concessions to a bully just makes them come back for more.
Main Arguments against are roughly:
What about Hamas and the hostages, and October 7th?
This is a local governing body, and we should stay in our lane
This isn’t worth the retaliation that it will bring. Don’t play chicken with Greg Abbott
A few stray themes I want to address:
Many people mention that San Marcos has sent $4 million in tax dollars to fund the war. That number seems to come from this website.
A couple people call on Matthew Mendoza to recuse himself, because he works for an Israeli IT company. He works for these guys, I think. (He addresses this in his comments.)
A few people call Shane out for falling asleep.
Is this true? Was Shane asleep??
Mostly he looks like this:
Sadly, I can’t really tell. You know I would have enjoyed making a big deal out of this, but I can’t quite justify it. I have standards.
Seven hours later, Citizen Comment winds down.
…
Council Discussion
It’s 1:00 am now, when Council finally dives in.
First, Amanda introduces the updates to the resolution. (Old version here, new version here.)
The major changes are:
Explicitly condemning the targeting of civilians
Explaining and organizing the intent of the resolution, and limiting the scope to the past 18 months
A legal CYA paragraph at the end, to reassure Abbott that this resolution does not call for San Marcos to break any state laws
Some #allwarsmatter language to clarify that we also care about Ukraine, Sudan, Ethiopia, etc.
Naming the international and federal laws that govern arm shipments
Council approves swapping in these changes, so this is the official version being voted on at the end of the meeting.
Everyone states their positions:
Jane: Rereads the Kirk Watson quote that she stated at the last meeting:
“The proposed resolution of the Austin City Council will not realistically end the violence on the other side of the globe. Nor will it stop federal taxes from being used to implement foreign policy. That is not in our power. The resolution, however, has the power to divide Austin, and will.”
Jane’s avoiding the morality discussion altogether, and strictly making a strategic argument here: this issue is causing too much fighting between residents of the same community. Therefore she is a “no” on this issue.
Later on, she states that she was a “no” even before Abbott’s letter. She is not responding to bullying. She is trying to end the discussion locally.
Amanda goes next.
The first half of her comments address the morality issue:
Last time I spoke to you all, I spoke off the cuff. I didn’t want to do that, because I felt like there are some things I really want to say, but listening to you all…
There are many things I don’t know.
I do not know what amount of death will finally be enough to quiet the screams in Gaza—the screams of children crushed by bombs, of doctors carrying the limbs severed without anesthesia, of stomachs howling from hunger while this country turns away.
I do not know how many more nights Palestinians must dream of meals they will never taste, or how many more days must pass where the only thing that briefly drowns out the screams is the sound of bombs falling.
I don’t know how many more years and decades need to pass for our government to care more for all of us and our loved ones, more than their cravings for funding death, deceit, and suffering around the world. I don’t know how many more years we have to watch our loved ones working till their bodies wear down and give up, to be able to survive. I don’t know how many more years we have to spend nights scared of the future we will leave for our children.
The second half of her argument addresses the strategic issue. Here she is making the case that this is the best way to respond to bullying and threats from the Governor:
But if there’s anything bringing forward this resolution has taught me so very clearly, our democracy is dying – if not dead already.
The past few days have revealed something deeply disturbing. We’ve witnessed, in real time, the methods of collective punishment this state is willing to use to force a city to bend the knee—not because of violence, not because of lawlessness, but because of speech they disagree with.
To everyone here, and to those watching—do something for me: Set aside the contents of this resolution, just for a moment.
Your Governor—and the political machinery behind him—threatened to defund you. Your neighborhoods. Your city. Why?
Because your neighbors dared to courageously ask this council to speak out against the targeted and indiscriminate killing of Palestinians in Gaza. The very neighbors we are taught—by faith, by conscience, by shared humanity—to love.
We didn’t arrive at this moment by accident. Generations of misplaced energy, of silencing dissenters, of confusing comfort with justice, have led us here, to a moment where the foundational right to free speech is not just under threat — it is being dismantled in plain sight.
And all of it is happening against a backdrop of rising hyper-individualism and deepening apathy, where too many have been taught that someone else’s suffering is not of their concern.
Know this: whatever your stance on this resolution is, that is no longer the question before us.
The real question, the only question, is whether you can walk out of these chambers tonight, and carry on with your life, knowing that the right to dissent now belongs only to those in power, and those who pull their strings. That our ability to speak truth has become conditional—granted or revoked at their convenience.
As those before me have used their power to raise alarms, so shall I.
And I don’t know where the camera is, but to Governor Greg Abbott: how dare you. How dare you use your energy to perpetuate collective harm against those who are already suffering, due to the shortcomings of this state. You have the power to protect, yet you wield it to destroy, to punish, to fuel the suffering of those you were sworn to serve. Your actions scream louder than any words ever could. And for that, I do not hate you. I feel sorry for you. It must be so miserable being that cruel and vindictive.
As a child, I used to ask myself and God, how horrors like chattel slavery were ever allowed. How could entire genocides unfold across the globe, with no one stopping them? How could some live in unimaginable wealth, while others starved in silence? How could humanity bear such cruelty?
But I understand it now. I see the truth in the crushing silence of our leaders. I see a media too afraid—or too complicit—to show us the truth of what we’re funding. And I see the dangerous, dangerous weaponization of Judaism to justify violence, not just against others, but at the expense of Jewish safety and integrity. Despite the atrocities of today being live-streamed, we still are left to confront the crushing weight of our tax dollars contributing to the suffering without our consent.
I’ll end with this. Despite the constant assertion that local governments should stay within their carefully crafted lanes, history has shown us something else entirely. Local governments have always been on the front-line defenders of the most marginalized and oppressed in our society. They have been the first to sound the alarm when the system falters, when justice is denied, when communities are left to suffer. Local governments should never be passive bodies that wait for the perfect moment to act, or hesitate while injustice takes root. They should be bold and courageous because that’s what the moment requires.
To everyone here today, I ask you this, and not just the people who came to speak for this: Do not sit idly by as this country continues its spiral into destruction, thinking you have no power to change the course of things. The power has always lied in the hands of the people. And that’s exactly why they work tirelessly to keep you from realizing it, to keep you from knowing what you’re capable of. But the truth is, your power is real, and it’s undeniable. It took you a year to get here, and you got here, because you didn’t give up. They fear you, and that’s why they try so hard to suppress you.
I plead with you: Whatever happens tonight, get involved. Engage with your communities. Talk to your neighbors. Learn from each other. Listen. Share your stories, your knowledge, your anger, and your hope. Do not let them strip you of the strength that lies within us all. It doesn’t have to be just death. Death can mean rebirth, and that happens because of you. So I thank you. I thank you for coming here and displaying such courage, such courage that for so many people, they are not willing to show. And I love this city, despite what people may say.
For the people who are sitting here, and not condemning the fact that our own governor – who you are all constituents of – has threatened to defund you, because he cares more about silencing you, than protecting you.
And I want to end with one quote. “When words offend people more than babies buried under the rubble, something is very wrong with our society.”
Saul goes next. He has been openly upset by the accounts of brutality in Gaza, and has acknowledged the moral argument in previous meetings.
Here he sticks to the strategic argument:
This topic has drawn so much attention in San Marcos. And it is dividing our community, in ugly ways. I hate to go back to the way it was, years back.* But as for my decision, I decided, after talking to several of my constituents, to stay in my lane and deal with the citizens of San Marcos voted me to do and the responsibilities that come with that. Therefore I’ll be voting no on this one, Mayor.
*I don’t know exactly what he’s referring to, here.
I’m extremely sympathetic to Saul here. I think he’s really wrestled with this in a genuine way.
Matthew goes next. Some of the citizen comments asserted that he should recuse himself, because he works for an Israeli IT company. Matthew addresses this part first:
First and foremost, I’ve already run through my company, and I’ve already asked them if there’s any conflict of interest, and they flat out told me “We don’t even know who you are.” I’ll make it very clear: I don’t have security clearance with the United States, let alone security clearance for any other organization.
I’m just a peon in a corporation, and I want a job, and I’m sorry if people feel like I shouldn’t work for that company, but guess what, it’s one of the few jobs in the world that allows me to use a skill set – which by the way, I don’t have college, so I busted my ass to get to where I’m at right now in the IT company. So I’m going to work there. And I want to work there because it’s a company that provides me with funds for my family, funds for me to be able to stay home, and to be able to contribute to our great community.
I go back eight generations in this family. First generation non-migrant worker. Ok? So to sit there and pretend like I am compliant to all this crap is ridiculous, it is insulting for you to sit there and call me that I’m willing to go ahead and contribute to genocide. That’s just – c’mon, you’re human beings. Why would you claim that somebody else who doesn’t have that power? So that’s done.
Now, I was elected to represent my city limits of San Marcos. I have no control or no authority over any other city, any other county, or any other nation. And nor do I want France or Germany or Israel or Palestine telling me how I should run my city, and make the decisions I have with these amazing 6 other individuals I have with me. We were elected. We are all different. We argue with each other consistently. We hold each other in such high regard so we treat each other with respect.
I have seen the division in this city in just the last month, and it’s become disgusting. People that are here – again, these are simple individuals – what people don’t realize here is this area that you’re in right now – San Marcos, Texas, that we love and that we cherish – ladies and gentlemen, the majority of it are migrant workers that have lived here for generations*. So simplicity is what sits in our hide. We don’t want to worry about everybody else. We’re so concerned about making our bills. We have an average family’s wealth here making $51,000 a year. We are one of the poorest counties in our state of Texas** and we are the poorest city in our beautiful county.
We’re being outrun by every other city, and you guys see where it’s coming out there. Ok. My priority – because my constituents have called me – my people who live in Barrio Pescado, who live in Sunset Acres, who live on Hunter Road, who have lived there for decades and I keep bringing this over again. Go to Parkdale on a day that it rains more than two inches and you have – excuse my french – but you’ve got shit coming out of their drains.
Now, why is that not a priority? Why are we not fighting over that? You know, if we’re going to fight the governor – which, I’m sorry to say it, it sucks that he’s here for two years, it is what it is – he’s elected, okay? I can’t change that. For us to actively go out there and try and yank funding from our very poor community makes no sense to me. It makes no sense that we’re denying our first obligation to the oath that we took to our charter of San Marcos. Our constitution. That’s where our obligation should stand, is within our city limits. And again, it’s called “city limits” for a reason.
I in no way want genocide to exist. I’m a human being. I don’t want children dying. I don’t want any of that stuff happening. But I want to remind everybody about the 1980s, 1990s, and the atrocities of Yasser Arafat***. This has been going on. There is such complicated behind this. You see division existing in my beautiful city. So I’m going to vote no, because my priority is the citizens of San Marcos.
This next part is the strongest part of Matthew’s speech:
Now I hope we can get together, and there was a gentlemen there in the sunglasses that had a great idea about trying to reach out to the governor. You want to make a difference, you want to talk about the funding that’s coming through? Then talk to our state representatives. Go talk to Erin Zweiner. Mrs. Zwiener’s one of the most amazing representatives that we have. And she’s willing to fight. But nobody’s going and knocking on her door! You need to go and talk to her. She has the power. Go run down Carrie Isaac. Go talk to Greg Casar. These are people who we all voted for! To make those choices for us. My limitations are here.
And I’ll be honest, I don’t want Greg Casar or Carrie Isaac or any other representative I have telling me how I should run my city that I live here and I intend to die here. I was born here. Eight generations go back, I can’t repeat that further enough that I am more committed to this now than anything else. That’s where the strength comes too, okay? And the fact again – I said it – Greg Abbott has made this threat. Whether you believe it or not, whether you want to sit there and say he’s a great man or evil man, the fact is that he’s the governor and he has the authority to do this, whether it’s legal or not, it’s going to be done. Now we could spend years going through litigation. We don’t have the funds for litigation like Houston, Dallas, or any of those cities that are sitting there doing it. And I’d sit back and ask yourselves, “Why haven’t these other cities done it? Why?” Because they have so many citizens that are at risk of this. My answer’s no.
Alyssa goes next. She is focusing on the First Amendment argument.
That is a perfect segue to my comments! Thank you, Matthew. I think that really helped set this up. You mentioned you don’t want Casar or other reps to tell you how to do your job as a local elected official. And so you don’t want to tell them how to do their job. The thing is, the Governor is telling us how to do our job in this situation.
I echo everything Amanda said. And for me, what it comes down to is – all of us can agree. Genocide is bad, right? Okay.
We are here to decide: Will we allow Greg Abbott to dictate what this community is allowed to care about? Will we allow ourselves to be threatened into silence? Because that is what’s happening. We’ve received letters from the Governor, Senator Campbell, and the Attorney General’s Office—all saying the same thing: “Shut up, or we’ll take away your money.”
But dozens of legal experts—right here in Texas and beyond—have confirmed what we already know: These threats hold no legal merit. This is political theater meant to scare us into submission. And yet… here we are.
So I’ll ask my colleagues: Do you condemn the Governor’s threats to San Marcos—yes or no?
Because regardless of how you vote tonight, I really want to challenge myself and the rest of this body to lead courageously. Our community deserves to know where each of us stand. I think it’s important for us to contemplate whether or not we believe it is just for the Governor to weaponize our city’s financial future to silence our voice. Whether it’s acceptable for a state leader to misrepresent irrelevant legal statutes to threaten our ability to govern?
We all know this isn’t about legality. It’s about control. He’s told us plainly: if this resolution isn’t fully denied, our bonds may not be approved. They’re going to take all our money. They’re going to make it harder for us to get any form of external funding that – to Councilman Mendoza’s point – we need. We’re not a rich city, by any means.
So no matter how each of you vote—I urge you: Use the platform our neighbors entrusted you with to name this for what it is: Government overreach. And it’s not okay.
We have to not just represent, but lead. And I can already feel the energy. I know how this vote is going to go. But not because anyone here supports genocide, Not because y’all agree with Abbott’s tactics, But because many of you can’t see the precedent this sets.
Like, I understand why. We have felt the anxiety of city staff. We’ve felt the anxiety of our neighbors who are reading in the newspapers and reading social media that all these lifelines are going to be taken from them. Right? If this body chooses to voice an opinion.
We care about operations, we want to keep things running, we want to protect what we have. But that’s exactly what we have here, because staying quiet does not protect us. And I just do not understand how that doesn’t weigh heavy on you.
This just makes it easier to be steamrolled next time. At what point do we say no more? At what point do we stop pretending that silence is strategy? At what point do we call on other cities to join us in refusing to be bullied?
Because yesterday, it was the constitutionality of our local can ban. Before that, it was whether citizen-led ballot initiatives were worth defending. And tomorrow, it’s gonna be whether we’re allowed to maintain some of the most robust environmental protections in the state.
Texas has been ground zero for regulatory preemption — where state leaders strip away local power every time cities do something they don’t like. And that’s messed up, y’all!
The onus is on us to figure out a way to push back. They don’t want us governing. They want us to comply.
But the more we fold to keep the peace, and to save us – the struggle of trying to figure out where to pull the money from to keep the lights on – the more control that they take. I feel like it’s so dystopian and wrong.
And I also just want to be clear—this resolution didn’t ask anyone to break the law. We’re not asking for anything illegal. But I do think that the edits that my colleague made reaffirm that and really lay it out in words.
We’re simply calling on our federal government and our state government to reconsider how it allocates our dollars, and how that money could be reinvested right here, in San Marcos.
Because we are interconnected. And again, it baffles me when people say this isn’t a local issue. That inability to see how all of this connects—how what we fund abroad shapes what we can fund at home—is why we’re losing local power. We can’t keep pretending that if we just “stay in our lane,” we’ll be safer. We need that external funding—the very funding going to another country, And that very funding Governor Abbott is now threatening to take from us.
I also just think it’s interesting that the Governor didn’t go door to door in San Marcos asking residents if they wanted their dollars funding bombs in Gaza. He didn’t poll Texans on whether to maintain business ties with a government accused of war crimes.
But the second we – the level of government closest to the people, speak up – suddenly we’re overstepping? Like, that’s bizarre. We are the government closest to the community’s heart. We feel the grief. We hear the voices. And if our people are calling on us to speak, I think we have to answer.
And yes—this is about genocide. I’m not drilling on that because I think everybody did a wonderful job presenting that piece. I just think we don’t get to say we care about children and then stay silent about the ones buried under rubble. We don’t get to say we care about safety while ignoring the violence we have helped fund. Even if it’s unintentional.
For me, the resolution isn’t symbolic. It is a stand for life, for local authority, for the soul of our city.
So I’ll close by asking once more: Do you stand with your community? Or with the Governor’s threats?
Because history is watching. And so are your constituents. That’s all I got.
Alyssa has been focused on the creep of legislative preemption for a while now. It is a really huge problem, but it mostly flies under the radar of what most people hear about.
That’s basically the end of the conversation.
What about Shane and Lorenzo?
Neither Lorenzo nor Shane say anything.
…
Finally, it’s time to vote:
Should San Marcos approve a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza?
So there it is. The ceasefire resolution does not pass.
There are another 15 minutes of Q&A with the public, and the meeting finally ends at almost 2 am.
The San Marxist 