What if City Hall moved downtown? Let’s dish. Also Tenant’s Right to Organize makes it across the finish line, Sights & Sounds is back, and – always – some election talk.
Your vote will never make a bigger difference! Go vote!
My endorsements for Council:
Place 1: Chase Norris
Place 2: Um. Argh. I have reservations about every candidate. I voted for Saul Gonzales, because of Cape’s Dam.
Charter amendments: there are 12.
All of them besides Prop C: minor and straightforward. Vote in favor.
Proposition C: Should the Mayor’s term be four years long, instead of two? I don’t have a strong opinion, but I voted against it. Do whatever you want.
Four in favor of the Tenants’ Right to Organize ordinance.
But not the landlords from the Austin Apartments Associations. They want us to carve out protections for property managers.
Other speakers, in response: Please do not protect property managers. That would create a loophole. [Note: we didn’t.]
We need managed growth.
Update on the EMS thing?
You all need to stand for the pledge.
Excited for new City Hall proposal
How about making the new City Hall environmentally sustainable? Like a One Water approach?
Pretty breezy and quick.
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Item 2: Tenant’s Right to Organize
We’ve seen this here, here, and here. This is the final stretch!
Lorenzo: Can tenant organizers go uninvited into apartment complexes? Answer: No, organizers are required to play by vampire rules. They must be invited in.
Lorenzo: Can we fix that?
Amanda: I don’t think we should fix that.
Amanda’s argument goes like so:
I wish this ordinance had more teeth
But Texas is a heavily pre-emptive state. (Meaning Texas micromanages its cities.)
Therefore I strongly recommend that we stick with the language that has held up so far in court.
City Lawyer: It would be weird to meddle in this way. Some apartment complexes let in Domino’s pizza to put out fliers, and others have gates. Organizers are held to the same rules as Domino’s pizza, and it would be weird to carve out extra privileges for them.
City Staff: Plus, tenant organizers are not helpless. They can mail postcards to residents and see if one of the residents invites them in.
So we end up not changing anything.
The vote on Tenant’s Right to Organize:
It’s official!
Really great work by all the community activists! And I’ll single out Max Baker for kudos – he was really the most visible driving force here.
Last year we didn’t see nor hear the Sights & Sounds of San Marcos.
But this year it’s back, baby!
And we’re spending $100,000 on it.
Half of that comes from Hotel Occupancy Taxes, which are supposed to be spent on tourism. So S&S is a good fit.
The other half is for the lights, which are kept up all month long.
Sounds great.
Pro-tip: if you’ve got a kid who wants to win a hot chocolate, they might want to find out what year S&S was founded, how many light bulbs there are, and what most popular food is. It’s all very cute.
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Item 17: ARWA
ARWA stands for Alliance Regional Water Authority. These are the folks trying to arrange water sources for us, for the next 50 years. It includes San Marcos, Kyle, Buda, and also Canyon Region Water Authority.
This started back in 2007, and it was a longterm plan to get water from the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer. It came online this summer! So this is great. Almost 20 years of longterm planning!
It was built in the early 1970s, when San Marcos had 18K people. So cute! Little baby San Marcos. Now we have about 70K people.
Apparently in the past year, they’ve had to evacuate multiple times due to gas and water problems. And whenever something big comes up at Council, community members don’t fit in the chambers. People spill out into the lobby and listen from there.
So the old building has run its course. We’re looking to build a new one.
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How is the Texas State Lege going to meddle?
The state won’t let cities borrow money to build city halls without voter approval. This makes everything complicated.
My pet conspiracy theory: this was done to deliberately manipulate cities into the loving arms of local private developers. This is called a Public-Private-Partnership, or P3.
In other words, keep it in the current location. They’d tear down the existing site and rebuild. Council would have to relocate during construction.
Option B:
ie move across the street, onto park land.
Option B was super unpopular! A lot of community members showed up to argue against it, because of this:
Both of these are heavily used and very popular!
City Council decided that they could keep the skate park where it is. They would just squeeze City Hall in immediately right up against the skate park, looming like a big shadowy Gotham City Headquarters over your rebel anarchist skater good time. (But the dog park would be relocated.)
In the end, Council went with Option B.
My $0.02: This is a terrible option and they got it wrong! Don’t use up your park land!
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Now, what if there was a Plan C?
Intriguing! Over the summer, an unsolicited option came in.
Here’s the new proposal:
I love this location! There’s nothing particularly sentimental or historical there.
Let’s check it out!
This is the Hopkins view.
Building 1 is this:
No strong feelings from me.
Building 2 is this:
This is a cute old building! It’s been empty forever. It used to be an Ace Hardware store.
Number 3 is an empty lot. It used to be a Mr. Gatti’s Pizza:
and then it briefly became this:
ie a fever dream of a diner, painted all black with neon flowers. Did we collectively hallucinate this?!
Anyway. Then it was food trucks:
and since then it’s just been parking:
Number 4 used to be where we had Tuesday Farmer’s Markets.
Back then it looked like this:
whereas now it looks like this:
Progress!
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Back to why this location is great! It would be a really healthy for downtown businesses if our city employees all worked nearby.
Until around 2011, the county employees used to work here:
I liked to call it the Supermarket of Justice:
That is now where Industry etc are:
In 2011, Hays County built the new County Government building, out on Stagecoach.
All the county employees emptied out of the downtown business area. This was hard on the local downtown restaurants and stores – they no longer had a steady stream of pedestrian foot traffic during weekdays.
So moving City Hall downtown would replenish some of that.
This is all great!
….
What else?
The developers are local. They’re all graduates of either SMHS or Texas State, or both. That’s nice!
In 2020, they pitched an earlier idea to the city – a combination City Hall-hotel-workforce-housing. Jane Hughson says, “They wanted the hotel to face Hopkins and City Hall to go in the back, which was a nonstarter.”
What other projects do they have? Well, they have ideas. They have plans with Hays ISD to build some sort of workforce housing thing, and Lockhart ISD is looking at it, too. But there aren’t any lots or conceptual plans or signs of progress on their website.
We are paying them $767,970.00 for this conceptual plan. That is a hell of a lot of money for our broke government.
Now, we’ve saved up about $12 million towards a new city hall, so that’s the source. It’s not displacing funding for something else. But it’s a lot.
2. They’re actually drawing up plans for this whole area:
Edited to add a corrected update: The map below is not the full scope of these developers. I got it wrong above! Sorry about that.
This map below is just showing the full scope of Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C, all together. The Plan C developers are strictly drawing up plans for the downtown piece. – TSM
WHAT IS GOING ON. Why is the Lion’s Club, and the stage area, the Veteran’s Memorial, the Activity Center, the library, the skate park, and the dog park all included??!
Why would these (probably very nice) bozos have any say in what happens to ANY of those public facilities? They do not have any experience in that. What the hell.
…
What does Council say?
First off, they’re only asking questions about this part:
and not the extended map above, that went through the parks and old City Hall.
Q: What about impervious cover? A: It’s already all impervious cover. It can only get better.
Matthew: The old hardware store is historic, and I’m worried about the elevation drop. A: Architects can handle the elevation drop.
Q: What would happen to the alleys? A: We don’t know yet. Maybe some kind of open air space.
Alyssa: I’m having deja vu of their old proposal. A: The 2020 proposal was much smaller. Jane: Plus they had the hotel out front and the city hall in back. No.
Saul: I like it! But I need to see how much it costs.
Jane: Love a hometown developer!
The vote: Should we spend $768K on this conceptual plan?
I probably would have voted yes, because the location is great. I’m just wary because these guys seem inexperienced.
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Final notes:
Somehow, this City Hall project is going to go off the rails. Really. Not because of this Plan C option, but because the math on this next slide does not make any sense.
This is from back in April:
Let me see if I’m following: we’ve saved up $12.7 million. We think we can get $15-20 million more from private developers. That adds up to ~$30 million.
But the whole project is supposed to cost $62-98 million! Where is this magical extra money going to come from?
These are the only options I see:
Voters will have to vote to approve a bond to borrow the rest.
This project ends up being about half as big as they’re hoping.
This project takes 25 years to complete
We end up selling our souls to find an extra $50 million from private businesses
In some way or another, reality is going to reassert itself.
We are putting together a Historic Preservation Plan. This will be pretty quick.
First off, I thought this background was interesting:
The presentation itself was mostly “How to Read the Preservation Plan” as opposed to the actual San Marcos content. But the plan is pretty readable, so I’ll just grab one or two interesting bits from it, and send you over.
For example, there’s a very detailed timeline, starting in time immemorial, with bits like so:
(Amanda Rodriguez: Could we add the names of the women to this photo? Staff: Absolutely!)
Hello everybody! It’s RIVER TIME! Let’s talk about the ugly fences, the litter (which did get better), and whether to start charging admission. Also tenants’ rights and some election talk.
Here we go!
Hours 0:00 – 1:15: Tenant’s Right to Organize and participatory budgeting. It’s a short meeting!
Council candidate Chris Polanco echoes the first amendment crisis, and also talks about having a disability in San Marcos
Global issues – Ceasefire in Gaza and fascist tendencies of the state government.
The DR Horton homes in Cottonwood Creek were built so shoddily that foundations are cracking in the first three years. People up and down their street are finding themselves trapped financially because these homes are built so poorly. Can the city prevent DR Horton from building new homes until they stabilize the existing ones? Or something else?
That last one feels like lawsuit territory. This sounds awful. (Maybe this is a good candidate for participatory budgeting – see below.)
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Item 9: Tenant’s Right to Organize
This is nearing the finish line! What should you do if you’re a tenant, and there’s mold in your bedroom, or your AC goes out, or you have no hot water, and your landlord refuses to fix it?
In Texas, you have very few options besides suing. You can talk to your landlord, of course. If they start to see you as a problem, you might be evicted. Filing a lawsuit is expensive, of course, and if you try to sue, you might be evicted anyways.
This is the point of this ordinance: tenants should be able to talk to each other about their landlord problems, and form tenant organizations, and bring issues to their landlords as a united front, without worrying that they’ll get evicted or face retaliation. (Discussed previously here and here.)
But they’re still allowed to do some things! Like so:
This is great! No tenant should fear eviction when they’re fighting for clean and safe housing.
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Council Discussion
There’s one small discussion point: property managers.
Suppose property managers are the ones doing the intimidating, and the landlord lives 1000 miles away. Should the property manager be held liable? Or does it go to the landlord, since they are responsible for their employees?
Lorenzo proposes an amendment to exempt property managers. Unfortunately, this ship has sailed – employees are already held liable in similar situations. Even if we adopt Lorenzo’s amendment, it doesn’t really protect them. (The amendment fails.)
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The vote on the Tenant’s Right to Organize ordinance:
Hooray! (Lots of hard work on this from the San Marcos Civics Club and TAG, so thank you to both of them.)
This is just the first vote. It will come through for a final vote at the next meeting.
Participatory Budgeting is a specific thing. It doesn’t just loosely mean “survey the people or invite them to watch the budget process”.
It works like so: a city sets aside a pot of money, and asks for ideas from the public. The community develops proposals, and then the public votes on which project to fund.
One of their taglines is “It gives people real power over real money.”
Alyssa (and Max Baker, back when he was on council) have brought this up for years. It gained a little more traction at the visioning workshop back in January, and then was included in the budget that we tried to pass in September.
But then – I’m still cranky about it – Council sabotaged the budget at the last meeting. One of the items that got axed in the carnage was $250K for participatory budgeting.
Apparently Lorenzo felt a pang of regret for driving us off the cliff? Maybe Alyssa was extra-furious about this part? (I shouldn’t speculate, because I have no clue.) All I know is that Lorenzo went to the city manager and asked if there was any way to fix this. Can she find some money to restore funding for participatory budgeting?
And lo: she found some! It’s displaced City Hall money.
In theory, we’re trying to sock away $1 million each year for that project. But this year, we’re using the most of that $1 million to put an offer in on the land next to Centro.
We’re expecting to have a little bit left over, and that’s going to be the Participatory Budgeting Pot of Money. Hooray!
Gentle readers: this is your call. Start brainstorming ideas!
Is there something in your neighborhood that could be transformed?
Do the kids in your neighborhood need a place to play?
Or a community gardens?
What about opening up the Activity Center on Sundays, or having longer front lobby hours for the library?
Or hey: a coordinated lawsuit or mobilization against DR Horton?
Go think up great things! Your mom tells me you’re very clever.
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Note #1: This was just a preliminary discussion. Participatory Budgeting will come back around as a formal proposal.
Don’t use up your park land! They’re not making more land.
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There were a few tiny other items – scheduling the election, filling some commission vacancies, appointing a municipal judge. And that’s all! It was an extremely short meeting.
However! Keep reading, to hear about the river. The action was all in the 3 pm workshop.
It’s all of the litter, and all of the repeated trampling of the banks, and the erosion of the aquatic wild rice and habitats for endangered species. It’s all bad.
3. The cost.
City staff really haven’t even brought up the price tag in the past few years, because the litter, damage to river, and lack of safety were so off the rails.
But of course, all solutions require people, and people’s labor costs money. So this is looming.
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Solutions
The 2023 season was so bad that Council realized we need to do something. So in 2024, we passed a can ban. Summer 2024 was the first implementation.
So this spring, Council cautiously agreed to try Managed Access for 2025.
That means this:
around Rio Vista and the falls.
Everyone thinks these fences are very ugly and sad! They’re not wrong. But I’m going to make the case that the fences are a good first step. It is a work in progress.
Basically, the falls, swimming pool, and tennis courts at Rio Vista were fenced off. In order to access them, you had to walk to one of the three entrances:
On weekends and holidays, those entrances were staffed. They’d check to make sure you weren’t bringing in anything banned, like alcohol or a bunch of styrofoam plates.
On the big holiday weekends – Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day – they also closed off Cheatham street altogether:
They also increased staffing. There were at least ten more employees just to staff the entrances and exits on weekends and holidays. There are a lot of hands on deck, picking up trash, monitoring situations, and available for emergencies:
It’s a really big operation.
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What does the public think?
At citizen comment for the workshop, three people spoke. I think they are all very involved in river clean-up efforts.
Major themes:
Fences significantly reduced the size of the crowds
Fences significantly reduced the amount of trash in the river
Fences significantly protected the riparian zones of the river, ie the wild rice and other environmental spots.
There is more work to do. There was still a ton of litter.
Let’s look at places that have done this well – for example, Copenhagen has a sustainable tourism program. Tourists can get perks if they pick up litter or take public transportation.
….
What does city staff say?
Litter started off rough, at the beginning of the summer.
Fences were put up at the end of May. Then:
Looking good!
And some data:
Note: July was much rainier and less-hot than usual. The 4th of July was pretty much rained out (while the tragedy was unfolding in Kerr County and elsewhere). So it wasn’t just strictly the fences.
Did visitors just go to a different part of the river?
Staff said no, they did not see an increased number of problems upstream or downstream from Rio Vista. It seems like everyone wants to be at the falls.
(It could still happen after a few years, of course. But it has not happened yet.)
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Overall, everything seems optimistic!
That is my personal belief, too – that this year, things were less dangerous and destructive than they’ve been in the past.
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So that’s 2025. What about the future?
Here are the big questions for Council today:
1. Do they want to keep fencing off Rio Vista in the future? (ie “Managed Access”)
2. Do they want to start charging out-of-towners for river access?
Let’s take these one at a time.
The fencing.
Another angle:
Everyone hates the big, bulky chain link look. Including me!
Can we at least make it look a little nicer?
Maybe!
Staff is not proposing that we put up permanent fencing. This would only go up between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
Council questions:
Q: Would we rent or buy the prettier fencing? A: We’d buy it. It would cost about $75K. Renting the fences this past summer was roughly $15K.
Q: People were cranky about the tennis courts being inside the fencing . Can we find a way to make them easier to access? A: Yes, we can definitely explore this for next year.
Bottom line: Does Council want to continue with the fences?
Mostly yes. Alyssa and Amanda are both a little squirrelly on the question, but they’re more yes than no.
Note: I am a hard yes. You only get one river, and overuse will kill your river. This is a dead on, textbook-example of a Tragedy of the Commons.
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2. Should we charge admission?
The problem is that we’re running a giant operation here, all summer long, and it requires a lot of staff. Furthermore, it mostly isn’t San Marcos residents using the river.
This is an old slide from 2024:
(Zartico is a company that tracks cell phone data. We paid them to track people on the river and tell us where people went afterwards. Yes, it’s a teeny bit creepy.)
The point being, about 1/3 of the park visitors were local, and 2/3 were in from out of town. Here’s 4th of July from 2024:
More from San Marcos, but still under 50%.
No one is proposing that we charge admission to San Marcos residents. But should we charge out-of-town visitors an admission fee?
What does everyone else do?
Lots of cities charge fees:
….
And so now, San Marcos?
City staff is recommending yes, we should start charging.
Here is what they propose to council:
What does Council think?
Jane: we should start our season earlier than Memorial day. Answer: That just costs even more.
Alyssa: How would residents get a river pass? Answer: You’d sign up in person or online. Like getting a library card. It would be a physical hard copy.
Alyssa: One per household or one per person? Answer: Per person. Alyssa: Even kids? Answer: I mean, you all are council. You tell us what you want.
Amanda: I have strong reservations about this. The river is a natural resource. I don’t like the idea of commodifying it. I don’t like the precedent it sets. New Braunfels probably started out only charging a little, and now it’s $25 to set out a blanket. And their river is still trashed.
Jane: Our out-of-town visitors aren’t spending money here. They’re not contributing to the tax base that pays for these parks. I don’t want to charge residents, but I’m okay charging out-of-town guests. They need to share the cost.
Saul: How much revenue would this bring in? Answer: We have no idea. It’s hard to even figure out how many people go to the river.
Let’s break it into categories
1. San Marcos Residents
No one is proposing that we charge San Marcos residents. But there’d have to be some sort of free pass system.
Every time you add a layer of inconvenience, you trip up vulnerable residents. (Think: undocumented community members who don’t feel safe signing up, or harried single mothers who keep forgetting to sign up. Etc.) Alyssa and Amanda voice some of these concerns.
2. People just outside the city limits.
What about people who live nearby? Like you have a San Marcos mailing address, but you’re not officially in city limits?
Jane, Shane, Saul, Matthew: They should get a reduced admission price. Alyssa, Amanda, Lorenzo: they should be free.
3. Actual out-of-town visitors?
Lorenzo: Yes. We should charge them. Jane: Yes. Same. Alyssa: I don’t know. This needs more work. Amanda: Kids at least should be free. Saul: I agree on the free kids. Matthew: I’m fine with what staff proposed. Shane: [never turns on his microphone, I have no idea] Alyssa: Who’s gonna pay $100 for a season pass? Come on. This needs work.
Fair point, Alyssa.
Overall: It’s a little hard to follow, but I think this is where everyone lands:
Yes, charge out-of-town guests: Jane, Lorenzo, Shane, Saul, Matthew
Maybe. We’re not sure yet: Alyssa, Amanda
No one is a hard no.
What do I think?
I’m on the fence. I hate the increase in bureaucracy and bookkeepping, and I wish for a state where we just properly funded parks and local governments. (See also: socialized health care is much cheaper than private insurance because it’s so much less paperwork, bureaucracy, and red tape.)
I also hate the idea that everyone on the river would have to keep a plastic card on a lanyard around their neck.
On the other hand, here we are – with actual bills to pay and actual rivers to save, people to keep safe – and that all costs money.
Maybe the river pass can be made into a little bracelet?
…….
Lorenzo: can we hold an evening workshop instead of a 3 pm workshop, so that more residents can attend?
Everyone agrees this is a good idea.
Bottom line: City staff will bring back more rate models and Council will have another workshop. But it looks like the writing is on the wall. I think it’s likely.
…..
One last workshop topic.
Paid parking at the Lion’s Club
We’re midway through a pilot year of paid parking at the Lion’s Club. It’s free for all residents, but you do have to register. (Register here!)
How’s it been working?
Ok, so it just started.
A few notes:
They have not yet been ticketing anyone, but they’re about to start. (Apparently there have been problems with Texas State students. Students can park there, as residents who want to use the parks, but not to go attend class at Texas State. I have no idea how they can tell who is doing what.)
“ETJ” stands for extra-territorial jurisdiction, ie the people who live nearby the city, but not in the actual city limits.
The main question: do we want to charge people less if they live in the ETJ? On the one hand, they don’t pay property taxes. On the other hand, they do come to San Marcos to go shopping, and so they pay sales tax.
How do we want to handle people who live close to San Marcos?
Charge a reduced fee: Matthew, Shane, Jane
Keep it free: Alyssa, Amanda, Saul, Lorenzo
There’s some minor quibbling about what “close” should mean. Anyone in who lives in SMCISD? Anyone with a San Marcos mailing address? some third option? I think they settled on SMCISD.
The San Marxist 
