Month: June 2026

Citizen Comment

The biggest topic was the arrest and ICE imprisonment of Gerardo Reyes and SMPD treatment of his son. Five people spoke on this topic (including Gerardo himself, his wife, and his daughter).

Since the last meeting, Gerardo was released from ICE, but there’s still a lot of issues left:

• Legal fees have piled up, the family has been traumatized, and they have lost 77 days of income
• There was never any crime committed in the first place. The son was a minor and was treated inhumanely as well, and is still facing charges.
• The officer has not faced meaningful consequences, despite evidence that he violated SMPD protocol
• SMPD and San Marcos have stonewalled the family. Release the bodycam footage.
• The family deserves apology, remedy, and transparency

(Petition and family GoFundMe if you’re so inclined.)

A few speakers on the Land Development Code:

• Still a lot of concerns with data centers. The constraints on water and noise are insufficient, and you need a decommissioning process for when they fold and walk away.
• Restrict electric and gas offsite generators to Heavy Industrial zones.
• Regulate the sale of water to other communities
• Form an environmental commission

Other topics:

• The two El Camino Ways are very confusing. Please rename one of them until they are connected in the future.
• Apartment complexes should not give the location of the complex on parking permits, for safety reasons.
• Good job on the budget town hall. But the public did not show up. You should update the downtown cameras for safety.

….

Item 1: FM 1978 Water Treatment Plant

Let’s talk about indoor plumbing. You flush your toilet or wash your clothes, and the water goes down the drain. If you’re on city water, it flows down city pipes until it gets to a water treatment plant. The water treatment plant cleans up the dirty water, and then releases it into nature.

We’re getting a lot of development east of 35, so we need a new water treatment plant.

Here’s where it will be:

From what I understand, there are a few different kinds of water treatment plants. From worst to best:

1. Multiple small package plants. These are bad because they cause algae blooms in the river.
2. Regular water treatment plant.
3. Reclamation water treatment plant.

We’re doing option 3! This means that we get gray water back out. You can use it to water a golf course or flush toilets or irrigate crops. It’s not clean enough to drink, but it replaces drinking water.

Eventually it will produce 2-8 million gallons per day. This is great! (It’s 100% bonkers that we use pure drinking water to water our lawns and flush our toilets. Or to cool a data center.)

…

This will be our second water reclamation facility. We already have one that’s been up and running for years.

Here’s some of the places that we already run gray water out to:

The Kissing Tree golf course, the Hays Energy power plant, and a lot of the irrigation downtown and at Texas State are all on gray water. This is great!

…

How much will this second water reclamation plant cost?

It’s not cheap. This is why City Hall will cost $80-100 million. It’s just expensive to build things.

Everyone thinks this is great.

…

Item 13-14: Student Housing

The neighborhood around Little HEB is kinda getting bulldozed.

Here are the student apartment complexes that Council has approved recently:

(2024 project:  Feb 27, April 2nd ,  April 16th,
2025 project: April 15th)

You can’t lower housing costs without an abundance of housing. But at the same time, it is a bummer to see a cool part of town lose its soul.

One other irritating thing: this is all the same developer. They hired Shannon Mattingly, who was the San Marcos Planning Director, and now they’re running the same playbook over and over again. It feels like we’re a buffet table for them.

Today they’re back for this piece:

I admit that it is a very good spot for apartments!

What’s there right now?

That main building is the Pennington Funeral Home:

Or rather, was the Pennington Funeral Home. (We’ve discussed how it has already been demolished.)

You see that little house to the right? The back half of it is white.

If you walk around the corner, this is the back half of it:

So this corner house and the yellow house behind it will be demolished, too. Or they already are!

…

Okay, fine. What’s going to get built?

They can already build apartments here. They can already sell them as rent-by-the-bedroom, as well. They do not need council approval for that.

However, they would like two perks:

1. They would like to have up to 5 bedrooms per units. Right now they’re capped at 3.
2. They would like to have 7 stories instead of 5 stories, so that they can fit in a lot more apartments. The height wouldn’t change.

Both of these mean that they can fit more students into one building.

In exchange, Council could ask for different things:

• Make the building LEED-certified, which means more environmentally friendly
• Make up to 10% of the units affordable housing
• Make up to 20% of their units “workforce housing”, which means slightly less affordable but still below market rate.
• Include a childcare facility, or retail space on the ground floor, or extra public park space.

Council could get creative! They have some cards to play here!

….

There is one extra important thing that Council cares a lot about:

In 2023, both Sanctuary Lofts and Vistas Apartments were sold to Texas State and converted to dorms. But Texas State doesn’t pay city taxes. So the city lost about $750K in yearly taxes, with this sale. Everyone was pretty salty about this.

Consequently, there is a condition that these new apartments can’t be sold to Texas State for 12 years.

….

For funsies, the developer made some drawings of what it might look like:

That’s nice!

…

What does Council say?

Amanda: I’m a no.

• This doesn’t benefit local residents.
• It doesn’t provide any affordable housing
• A 12 year delay on selling to Texas State is not long enough.
• We don’t have enough protections for tenants in place yet.

Matthew: I’m a yes!

• Keep students next to campus, and away from our neighborhoods.

Nobody: Why don’t we ask for more concessions, like affordability, Leed-certified, or extra green space?

The vote:

(There were two separate votes – one for extra stories and one for 5 bedroom units. They both went the same way.)

…

My $0.02: I probably would have voted yes, but I think we should have asked for more concessions. We gave away too much in 2025, as well.

…

Item 10: back to Operation Triage

[Note: I got this story garbled when I first published it. I think the current version below is correct, now.]

A few meetings ago, Council was going to give some money to Operation Triage and Mission Able, for home repairs. The Mission Able part got derailed by one specific home owner, who told a harrowing tail of how her foundation repair became a nightmare.

Today, this item took about 30 seconds. Everyone just said, “We got everything squared away! We’re giving the money to Operation Triage. The home owner is getting help.”

The vote:

Lorenzo wasn’t convinced, I guess.

….

Item 17: Land Development Code amendments

Background: The Land Development Code is where all the detailed rules live that govern how things get built. Every few years, it’s time to make updates. Previously discussed here , here, and here.

Last time they passed 5 amendments, but they weren’t done with everything yet.

Today’s topics are:

1. Banning Data Centers
2. Alcohol permits downtown for bars and restaurants
3. Signs posted to announce upcoming hearings
4. Council overturning P&Z decisions on alcohol permits
5. Regulating large scale electric and on-site gas generators
6. Strike a weird bit about businesses being limited to corners

Let’s dive in! I’ll keep this brief-ish.

…

1. Banning Data Centers

Backstory: Back in April, Amanda made a motion: all data centers should be banned in city limits.

The April vote went like this:

So it failed.

Council then spent two more meetings wheeling and dealing about how to regulate data centers. Do they get permitted from P&Z or Council? Which zonings are they allowed in? What regulations do we put on sound and water and electricity? Etc. Many hours were spent.

This meeting

So I was not expecting it, on Tuesday, when Lorenzo said, “I’d like to re-open the vote on whether to ban data centers.”

Clearly there have been off-screen discussions!

They spend barely 30 seconds debating it. Jane and Josh both say: “I’m a no. I’m hoping the technology gets better and so we can allow them without destroying the environment.”

Lorenzo: “I actually feel that way, too. But we can always go back and un-ban them.”

The new vote:

So there you have it: no data centers in the city limits.

All the wheeling and dealing clearly occurred outside of Council meetings. It was weird and mysterious.

…

Is this good? Some thoughts:

• This is democracy! Residents of San Marcos do not want data centers! It is healthy for city council to reflect the will of the people.
• The technology for sustainable data centers already exists. They can use reclaimed water for cooling and solar for electricity. Texas just isn’t willing to regulate businesses.
• The data center problem isn’t a city problem. It’s a county problem. Counties can’t regulate data centers. The overwhelming majority of data centers are outside city limits. Until Texas law changes, the data centers are going to cannibalize central Texas.

As always, the problem with San Marcos is Texas.

…

2. Alcohol permits downtown involving food trucks.

Lord. We spend about 30 minutes listening to Jane go in circles. Back in May, she got flustered and upset about this topic and never really recovered.

The issue: do food trucks count as restaurants that can sell alcohol?

I keep deleting my explanations, because it’s truly too boring to read. Yes, food trucks count as restaurants that can sell alcohol.

In the end, they add a definition: mobile truck unit.

…

3. Signs for public hearings:

When there’s going to be a public hearing for an alcohol permit or a rezoning, you have put up signs like this:

except it says “San Marcos” instead of “Temecula”.

Up till now, the city has put them up. Should we have the applicant put them up, instead?

Council decides no. Double-checking the applicant’s work is more work than just doing it ourselves.

…

4. P&Z decisions for alcohol permits

P&Z grants permits to restaurants to serve alcohol. If someone doesn’t like the decision, they can appeal to Council. It takes a 6-1 vote to overturn P&Z.

This played out with Tantra in 2024. P&Z put a severe noise restriction on their CUP. (It was ridiculous.) Tantra went to Council, and there was a huge community outcry. Council overturned the decision.

Amanda wants to kill the supermajority requirement to overturn P&Z on alcohol permits, so that the Tantra situation can’t happen again.

The vote:

So it passes.

…

Note: I strongly disagree. This is bad governance. The Tantra situation was a very unusual edge case, and edge cases make bad policy.

Much more often, it goes like this: a business wants to renew their alcohol permit. They’ve been extremely negligent about paperwork. For example, they let their permit expire 8 years ago. P&Z puts some constraints on their permit to get them back on track.

The business says, “Wah! But I’m just a baby!” and calls up every member of Council to complain and piss and moan. Then Council reverses the P&Z decision, and lets them get away with negligence.

Listen – two things can be true:

1. Sometimes P&Z makes crazy decisions that need to be overturned. (Tantra)
2. Sometimes businesses are trying to use their connections to get out of consequences.

The second scenario happens WAY MORE OFTEN than the first scenario. But Amanda has now tilted the playing field towards those businesses. Boo.

(Also, it’s generally bad when a government body weakens a check-and-balance mechanism.)

….

4. Cleaning up weird code

There’s an odd clause all over the Land Development Code:

No one knows why it’s there and no one enforces it. So we’ve removed it.

…

5. Regulating gas and electric generators

Originally, this was part of all the data center discussions. Data centers all have large scale back up generators, which can cause a ton of pollution and noise and mess.

But now, we’ve banned data centers. Do we still want to regulate generators?

Answer: Yes. Someday data centers might be un-banned, or there could be another reason someone is using large scale power generation.

…

And with that, the Land Development Code updates are complete! Good work, team.

…

Item 18: Fire Station No. 3

This is Fire Station No. 3:

It’s down on Hunter Road, near Miller middle school and across from the HEB distribution center.

They’re getting an apparatus bay, workout/fitness room, storage areas, new driveways, and interior renovation. It’s costing about $5.6 million.

Someday soon, kids, it will look like this:

Great!

…

Item 21: City Hall Steering Committee

The whole 3 pm workshop was about City Hall. At that workshop, they decided to grow the steering committee.

The steering committee was originally chosen back in November 2024. Every councilmember picked two steering committee representatives.

It was the last meeting of Mark Gleason and Jude Prather. In a jerk move, council voted to let the outgoing council pick the members, rather than the incoming council. So Amanda and Lorenzo have never had representation, and new councilmember Josh does not either.

Now we’re fixing this. Amanda, Lorenzo, and Josh will each pick a steering two new committee members. The committee will get six new members.

Would YOU like to be on the committee? If so, you can apply here. Or you can just email Amanda, Lorenzo, and Josh directly, at arodriguez7@sanmarcostx.gov, lgonzalez@sanmarcostx.gov, and jpaselk@sanmarcostx.gov.

…

Item 22: El Camino Way

We’re going down just past the high school for this next one:

In that area, there’s a road called “El Camino Way”, which is partially built:

The problem is that the two halves of the road don’t connect. This causes all sorts of problems for delivery trucks and people using google maps.

Eventually they will connect! Some day. Just not today.

In the meantime, we’re going to pick a new name for the new one.

Some ideas:

• Crested Cara Cara Way
• Wild Wind Way
• Old Johnson’s Farm Road
• Heritage Road

Someone named Carla spoke at Citizen Comment, because she lives over there, and explained the whole situation to Council. She joked that Carlita’s Way would be a good name.

Everyone on council agreed! You can’t say this town doesn’t have a sense of humor.

P&Z gets to recommend a name. They can pick whatever they want, but Council’s gonna overturn them in favor of Carlita’s Way.