At the beginning of January, Council had some workshops. The topics were:
- Paid parking at the Lion’s Club
- Fencing and charging an entry fee at Rio Vista
Let’s dive in!
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Workshop 1: Paid Parking at the Lion’s Club:
We started charging for parking this past summer. Do we want to keep doing it?
In theory, residents are free. But only if you’ve gone online ahead of time and register your car. (Register your car here!)
- If you don’t register, or you don’t live in San Marcos, you’re supposed to pay at the kiosk.
- If you don’t register and you don’t pay at the kiosk, you’re going to get a ticket in the mail.
Your license plate is scanned when you come and go, any time between 6 am and 11 pm. The ticket gets automatically processed and mailed out.
How well is it going?
Is that good or bad?
- 3637 isn’t very many, in a town of 70,000. That’s not good.
- It’s only been six months, though. Give it time.
- Apparently 25% of those tickets went to San Marcos addresses. That’s bad! Locals are supposed to be free.
- But again, patience.
If you get a ticket, you can just call the city. Staff will walk you through the registration process and then cancel the ticket. That’s good! But not everyone knows that’s something they can do.
Amanda and Alyssa are both concerned: Who is getting rejected from the system? What barriers are there to getting the permit?
Answer: We’ve had 345 applications rejected. Most were rejected because they didn’t provide a driver’s license, or the photo ID plus address.
- Some were out-of-towners
- Some might have gone back and completed it later
We don’t really know how many people gave up or were turned off by the process.
(Jane asks a zillion oddball, detailed questions of the form, “If a person does X and then Y happens, can the system do Z?”
The answer is always, “No, the system cannot do that.”)
Question for Council: do we want to exempt people close to San Marcos?
One of the major complaints has been from people who have come to the river for years every morning, but they live outside of town.
Council decides to exempt all of SMCISD. So all San Marcos residents and all SMCISD residents can park free at the Lion’s Club. But you do have to go register first.
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Workshop 2: Fencing and charging admission at the river
Background: We’ve been destroying the river for the past half-dozen years. It seems to be mostly out-of-towners taking day trips to San Marcos.
The major problems are:
- Safety: People get super drunk, people get heat stroke, there are lots of rocks and lots of deep water, and the crowds are too packed and unsupervised.
- Cost: it’s super expensive to hire enough marshals and staff to keep things safe, and then we can’t even hire enough people to fill the slots. The out-of-town visitors tend to just visit for the day, and leave without spending money in town.
- Environmental: wild amounts of litter, erosion of the banks, and destruction of the wild rice and other underwater things. The little endangered fishies need their habitats.
In 2024, we tried a can ban. But things were worse than ever! Nobody enforced the can ban because staff was so overwhelmed by the safety issues. They spent all their time dealing with crises.
This past summer, 2025, we tried fencing off the river:
In my mind, this was a big success!
The river was still free. On weekends and holidays, staff was stationed at the entrances. They could stop you, tell you about the styrafoam ban, make sure you’re not bringing alcohol in, and so on. Basically, they just educated visitors on the park rules.
This seemed to help! The crowds were a bit smaller and less out of control.
- The city saved money because it took way less staff.
- The litter was less intense.
- The crowds were less intense.
It was partially due to the very rainy July, but also the fences.
(My theory is kinda depressing: I think people stopped coming because they couldn’t easily bring alcohol in.)
Which brings us to this workshop.
Two main questions to deal with.
- Does Council want to keep having the fences?
- Does Council want to keep it free, or start charging out-of-towners? (Nobody is interested in charging local residents.)
Last year, the fence was ugly.
This year, they’re proposing something less ugly:
It would still be temporary! It would go up in May and come down in September.
Here’s where the fence would go:
Basically the same as 2025.
They’re going to add in two gates, at those blue squares by the tennis courts. But only for during the week, so that people can easily walk into the park. On the weekends, they’ll be closed, so that we don’t have to hire more staff to sit there.
It’s got some drawbacks – like taking kids to the Children’s Park is more difficult on holiday weekends – and staff is going to try to work through some of those issues.
Should we charge an entry fee?
I loathe the idea of charging money for the river. The problem is that we’re the last free river park.
When all the river parks in all of central Texas were free, the crowds could disperse evenly. One by one, each park started charging entrance fees. This increased the pressure on the remaining parks.
If I had a magic wand, Texas would properly tax its wealthy citizens, and then we would use that money to subsidize public parks, and they would stay free.
Since that’s not going to happen, and since San Marcos just voted for candidates who ran on lower taxes, we are stuck choosing between three things:
- Use a huge chunk of our budget keeping the river parks safe and clean
- Let the river get destroyed and let visitors get hurt.
- Charge out-of-towners for using the river
So here we are.
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How much does it cost to staff the river?
A lot!
About $500K.
How would charging people even work?
First off, it’s supposed to be free if you live in town. It would be similar to parking at the Lion’s Club:
– Register online ahead of time.
– Get a QR code on your phone to show the people at the gate.
– Or just show your ID at the gate to get in.
Note: But I don’t want to bring my phone OR my wallet to the river! This already sucks.
Out-of-town people would pay online ahead of time, and get a QR code.
Alyssa and Amanda have a lot of concerns with people having to navigate this process. It’s similar to the parking problem – every time you put friction into a system, you lose your vulnerable people.
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How much money will this bring in?
We don’t know! It costs $30K to get the software.
We don’t really know how many out-of-towners come to the park. And we don’t know how many people will stop coming if it’s not free anymore.
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There are a few different questions:
- Does Council want to charge anybody?
- If so, who counts as an out-of-towner?
- How much do we want to charge?
We’ll take these one at a time.
Does Council want to charge out-of-towners?
Yes: Jane, Shane, Matthew, Josh, Lorenzo
Postpone for a year to collect data: Alyssa, Amanda
So that passes.
Who should get in for free?
Everyone agrees: All of San Marcos and all of SMCISD.
How much should we charge?
Everyone wants staff bring back options.
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Just to note: New Braunfels charges $2 to get in the river, and $25 to stop and put a blanket down on the grass.
TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS! We will not be doing that. That’s nuts.
The San Marxist 