Citizen Comment:
Two people spoke at 3 pm, and four at 6 pm.
Major points:
- The solid rocket motor testing at the Freeman Ranch, over the Edward’s aquifer recharge zone, is an environmental nightmare. The ground is super porous and it will go straight into our drinking water. Can Council write a letter to the Board of Regents opposing this location, please? (Comment from director of SMRF, the San Marcos River Foundation.)
- San Marcos Civics Club is holding its Speak Up! event at Eddie Durham Park*
- Can we get updates on a lot of ongoing issues, like the license plate readers, Cape’s Dam, and EMS?
- We should partner with Texas State to put on events that bring people downtown
- Can we hold a town hall to address concerns about the apartment complex going in on Valley Street?
*sadly this blog doesn’t come out in time for this to be helpful. It was yesterday.
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Items 1-3: Q1 finances
Every three months, the city reviews its finances. This one covers October, November, and December 2025.
Here’s the summary by fund:
Green is good! Great. Investments are fine, the audit came back clean, everything is on track.
The budget is still very lean this year. This report just means that we’re sticking with the plan – nothing new is going wrong.
No one had questions.
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Item 4: North of Campus Neighborhood Area Plan
Area plans are supposed to help a neighborhood nail down its unique flavor, so that it doesn’t get overrun by change, while maybe also solving some of its problems.
Here’s the first batch of neighborhood area plans:
(Read ’em all here, if you want.)
So far we’ve seen Blanco Gardens and Downtown. I think Dunbar/Heritage is getting split into two plans?
Today’s Plan: North of Campus Area
They mean this patch here:
zooming in:
It’s actually pretty small. It’s a very Texas-State-feeling part of San Marcos – the Pie Society strip mall, a few bars and restaurants up LBJ, and a lot of small apartment complexes and rental houses.
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They did a lot of outreach to get community input:
It’s very hard for cities to connect with residents and get their input. People are busy. But this is what it looks like when a city is trying.
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Here’s what people like about this neighborhood:
Seems about right to me.
Here’s what maybe needs some love:
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What does Council say?
Basically nothing! Today was just an update. This will get a public hearing on April 21st, and get a vote on May 5th
They thank staff for working so hard on all of this.
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Item 14: A wee little annexation
TX-DOT owns a little building here:
They’re on septic. They want to be annexed into the city so that they can tie into city sewer.
Everyone says okay.
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Item 15: Budget Policy Statement
The city takes most of the year to build the budget for the next year:
The big problem is that we don’t know how much tax revenue we’re getting until pretty late in the game. So there are a lot of guard rails to help city staff plan the budget in the meantime.
March is Budget Policy time. This is where Council sets a bunch of expectations for staff to work with.
It doesn’t always work! Council can change their mind later on, and send the budget into a tizzy. Like last year, when this happened ten minutes from the final vote:
We were heading to the right until literally the last ten minutes of a ten month process! It killed me a teeny bit. But at least city staff tried their best.
So now we’re here:
That $4 million red X is the consequence of the decision to drive off the left cliff in the diagram above.
Here’s what we’ve had to do so far:
(Those slides are all from the February budget policy workshop.)
Ok, but wait. How much were we going to have to raise taxes on home owners? Like hundreds of dollars or something?
No. Look at the last two columns:
Listen: if you ever hear someone complaining about the city, chime in and say, “Yes! Can you believe how short-staffed they are? Why won’t Council pass a structurally balanced budget?”
Thank you for being my propaganda army.
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Everybody on council wishes real hard that we could bring in more businesses and get more sales tax revenue from businesses!
Unfortunately, that solution does not yet exist, today in 2026. We’ve got some lines in the water, but in the meantime, we are squeezing our city dry. (Also, if your “economic incentive program” amounts to giant tax breaks, you haven’t solved your problem. You’ve just subsidized private business interests.)
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Also! Also! The $4 million shortfall does not include EMS. The EMS conversation will happen next week.
Stay tuned!
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So! What does Council want to do for 2027?
- They want to plan on the same property tax rate of 65.15¢ as last year
- They are not going to cut HSAB, which is basically our funding for social services. That is good.
- Some little details about debt ratios and covering the expenses, since Covid money is ending
- A whole lot of thoughts and prayers about tax revenue coming in higher than expected. In other words, half our policy is “fingers crossed!”
It is true that San Marcos home owners are often broke, and the thought of $10 extra per month can add one more layer of stress to a dangerously thin budget. This is not a wealthy city. People do not generally have a lot of savings to cover a health care emergency or car crash.
My $.02: Yes, we should raise property taxes slightly. I know San Marcos is broke, but the brokest people of San Marcos do not own their own homes, and the wealthiest parts of San Marcos can afford $10/month.
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Items 16-17: Downtown TIRZ
“TIRZ” stands for Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone.
Here’s the Downtown TIRZ:
It started back in 2011. The TIRZ is a tax deal where the city splits the downtown tax revenue with them. They get to keep part of their tax revenue, provided they spend it on making the downtown nicer. The idea is that then the downtown gets a boost, and starts bringing in more tax revenue, and everyone wins.
The TIRZ is almost over. It ends in December 2027. So now they’re just wiggling little final details here and there, like these from December.
This time they’re asking for $200,000, to pay for a Downtown Alley Lighting Plan.
Sure, why not. Everyone says ok.
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Item 18: Paid Parking at the Lion’s Club
Last year, we started charging for parking at the Lion’s Club parking lot.
It’s free for residents, but you have to go register here. Registration is kind of finicky, because you have to upload photo ID. (You can do it in person if you hate that kind of thing.)
Last summer, it was just residents to the city limits who got in free.
Now it’s going to be free for everyone in pink, blue and purple:
Discussed here, back in January. (The purple is really pink+blue.)
The idea is that this roughly includes everyone who feels like they’re part of the San Marcos community, even if they don’t pay city taxes.
Everyone is fine with this.
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Item 19: Fees for Rio Vista Park
Last summer, we fenced off the park around the falls:
It was temporary fencing, just for the summer.
The reason we did that was because of crowds:
and litter:
It just destroys your river. You only get one river. Plus there were tons of medical and public safety emergencies – lots of drunk people and heat stroke.
Furthermore, it was super expensive to staff the parks. Most of the visitors were from out-of-town, but they didn’t shop at San Marcos stores or eat at the restaurants. San Marcos residents avoided the river, because it was so packed and unpleasant.
Hence the fence. This is Summer 2025:
Last year, it was still free to get in. City staff just stopped everyone at the entrance on holidays and weekends, and went over the park rules about no alcohol, no single-use containers, etc.
Anecdotally, it helped a lot! I liked this solution a lot: fenced-but-free.
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They decided last fall to keep the fence. But in light of the huge hole in our budget and all, they also decided to start charging admission for out-of-towners.
Here’s the plan:
Note: we’re still just talking about holidays and weekends over the summer.
What this means is if you want to use the park on weekends or holidays, you will have to register or somehow prove your residency, just like with the parking at the Lion’s Club. (SIGH.)
Here’s what you’ll need:
They’re going to try to use software that automatically registers everybody who registered for parking already, and everyone who has an Activity Center pass.
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What does council say?
Amanda: How does it work? What if a resident just shows up empty-handed?
Answer: They can just show their ID at the gate! This summer is all about educating people.
Matthew: I live in Rio Vista neighborhood! At the neighborhood meeting in 2023, everyone said they wanted fees and they wanted to use their phone for entrance.
Amanda: I know people on Field Street who never heard about this meeting.
Note: People from Rio Vista have actually reached out to me, your friendly marxist blogger! I was told that they actually prefer not to bring their phone to the river. Their suggestion was an entry bracelet or something that can be worn while swimming.
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I am 90% sure that the Free Zone for the park is going to match up with the Free Zone from the Lion’s Club parking:
In other words, if you live in San Marcos, or if you’re 78666, or if you are zoned for SMCISD, you’re in the Free Zone.
The vote on the fee plan:
Amanda wants to keep the river free for everyone, because it’s a natural resource that should belong to everyone.
(I agree. Fenced-but-free!)
My other concern is that the profit won’t actually materialize, after you subtract out the cost of the computer software needed to register everyone and accept payments, and the cost of employee time. In other words, I’m not convinced this will even pay for itself.
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Item 22: Making council meetings more efficient
A few weeks ago, the Data Center city council meeting ran until 2:30 am. The very next meeting, Jane proposed cutting Citizen Comment time slots from 3 minutes to 1 minute. She got raked across the coals, including by moi, because it’s a terrible suggestion and the timing looked really bad. It looked retaliatory, for sure.
Nevertheless, it’s true that Council doesn’t work well at 2:30 am. No one is at their best.
Today is supposed to be more open-ended: does anyone have any great ideas for making meetings shorter?
Shane: We used to cap Citizen Comment at 30 minutes.
Answer: Legally, we can’t do that anymore. The state passed a Citizen Comment law since then.
They go in circles for awhile about trying to limit opportunities to speak. Right now there’s:
- Citizen comment: anyone can speak on anything, at 6 pm
- Public Hearings: some items have a built-in comment period, throughout the meeting.
- Q&A after the meeting
Lorenzo: Maybe we can keep someone from speaking three times on the same topic?
Answer: you’re going to chase your own tail trying to police that. You’re going to waste more time arguing with private citizens about whether or not they were on topic or not. That is a fool’s errand.
Amanda: First off, this has only happened three times or so in the past few years. It’s not actually happening all the time. Second, there’s a rule on the books already – should a meeting need to be continued on another business day, you can do that. We can already do that, if we want.
Jane: There’s some technicalities around that.
Amanda: Sure.
Note: as far as I can tell, this is the only real solution. If it’s 11 pm and there’s hours of meeting left to go, cut it off and pick up again at 6 pm on Wednesday.
Alyssa: There is a ton of research out there, if anyone can do a lit review.
Jane: Maybe our city clerk can hit up the message board for city clerks in Texas, and see how other cities handle it?
Lorenzo: What if we stop having staff presentations altogether? If we just all read the packet ahead of time, we don’t need staff to go over it at the meeting.
Answer: The presentations are for the public, so that they can follow what’s going on.
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They go in circles for about an hour. In the end, they decide to crowdsource the issue.
If YOU know how to make their meetings shorter, they’d like you to fill them in, please and thank you very much.
The San Marxist 