Citizen Comment:
There were eight speakers, on diverse topics:
- The first amendment is being trampled in the US right now. (True!)
- We need to be mindful of our budget and run San Marcos like a business.
- Austin Apartments Association represents a bunch of landlords as members. They’re mixed on Tenant’s Right to Organize.
- San Marcos Civics Club is holding their candidate forum on Thursday, and they also have their questionnaire available: Place 1 and Place 2.
- 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.)
Under the ordinance, here’s what’s protected:
(These are old slides from last month.)
Here’s what landlords are NOT allowed to do:
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.
Item 13: Participatory Budgeting
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.
Here’s the graphic from the website:
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.
Note #2: Since we mentioned the new city hall, let me say again that I hate this plan. They want to relocate City Hall across the street, and into our parks.
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.
The San Marxist 