Lots of little topics this week! Keeping downtown looking nice, the new city EMS, new tax rates and new utility rates, school zones, bus routes, and new scooters. Each item is pretty quick and zippy.
Let’s get into it:
Hours 0:00 – 1:18: Lots of little topics: downtown, new scooters, EMS, school zone hours, utility rate hikes, tax rates, and bus routes.
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: More detail on tax rates and utility rates, and new EMS rates.
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Elections: the candidate filing period is over, so no one new can jump in. Candidates are locked in!
If you know about any candidate forums or interviews, please let me know.
I’m combining citizen comment from the 6 pm meeting and the 3 pm workshops:
Cottonwood Creek is very far from all polling stations. There is not good public transit to get to any of them. 123 is dangerous and insufficient.
Under the new impact fees, a small 1200 sq ft house, built on an infill lot in town will be $40K more expensive. That’s a big burden.*
San Marcos Civics Club meets the 4th Monday of the month, at Tantra. Candidates should look for the SMCC questionnaire coming out soon. Also their 3rd annual “Reasons Not to Vote” rally will be coming up.**
City government is facing public perception that they only do the right thing when tons of people show up and get mad, and that they don’t do a good job of promoting things that are important to the people. The Ethics Inquiries are not widely promoted. Consider ramping up your outreach and social media messaging.
The streetlights in Allenwood are chronically out. It’s not clear if the city is responsible or if the San Marcos Housing Authority is responsible, but residents are getting the runaround. In addition, the roads are awful, to the point where it impedes mobility for wheelchair users.
* This is true, but this is why Council needs to offer rebates for infill, affordable housing, and green housing. They have said they will do this! They just need to follow through.
** The name of the rally still hurts my soul.
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Item 19: The Downtown TIRZ
Background
TIRZ stands for “Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone”.
Basically, a TIRZ is a way to pull money from the General Fund to one specific part of town. The goal is to make that part of town so much more economically vibrant that it generates way more tax dollars for the General Fund after the TIRZ ends.
TIRZes have a specific time frame. During the TIRZ, the city budget doesn’t get extra money. The pay-off should be after the TIRZ ends.
We have a Downtown TIRZ, which covers this territory:
It started in 2011 and it runs until 2028.
The details are a little weedy, but basically: take all the property tax dollars paid by all the businesses and properties in that green region. Those tax dollars get split up into two buckets:
How much downtown properties paid in taxes in 2011. This is called the base value. The base value is $87 million, which is about $560,000 in tax dollars. The city keeps all the tax dollars from this bucket.
How much more valuable the downtown properties have gotten, since 2011. Since 2011, the downtown properties have grown by about $300 million. That yields about $2 million in property taxes.
This city gives 70% of this bucket back to the Downtown TIRZ. So the Downtown TIRZ gets about $1.3 million from the city this year.
The city keeps about $700,000 from this bucket.
Here’s the actual amounts, split between the city and the Downtown TIRZ in the past few years:
The Downtown TIRZ is supposed to spend their chunk on things that make the downtown a great place to visit, so you’ll want to go and spend money and enjoy it.
It all ends in 2028 – the two buckets get combined again and everything goes to the city.
Are TIRZes good or bad?
The good: Everyone gets to enjoy a nicer downtown! After 2028, the general fund will get a boost!
The bad: The downtown gets their tax dollars before it gets to the General Fund. They get that $1.1 million, no matter what. When department budgets are dwindling, Council can’t revisit this $1.1 million and divy it up differently.
My $0.02: I’m fine with the Downtown TIRZ. A happy, vibrant downtown benefits everyone. However, Kissing Tree is also a TIRZ, and it’s gated off. They get $1.7 million from the city this year, and it only benefits Kissing Tree residents.
That is more than double what we spend on the entire HSAB fund for social services! Just for those residents. It’s wild.
Remember: we subsidize Kissing Tree residents far more than anyone else in town.
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Anyway, back to downtown. Here’s what they’re going to do this year:
They’ll pay to do things like scrape the gum:
And light the trees:
And spruce up the intersections:
Everyone is fine with this!
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There’s a bit of a digression to talk about this tree:
and how it’s tearing up that sidewalk. It’s right by mini-Target, by campus.
It’ll cost about $300K to build a usable sidewalk around it.
Question: Can Texas State kick in some money to help with that price tag? Answer: Maybe! We’ll talk to them.
Either way, the tree will be preserved. Everyone loves giant oak trees.
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Item 9: Scooters
We used to have rental scooters around town. Back in June 2025, Spin Scooters decided to break up with us, and they up and left San Marcos.
Look how happy you’ll be. They’ll be here on September 1st.
You’ll be able to use them in all the green zones (plus Texas State):
But the pink bits are off-limits. No scooters in the river.
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Will these be affordable?
Potentially! There is a low-income discount: anyone who qualifies gets 50% off all their rides.
How do you qualify? It’s a little murky. Basically, they want to piggyback on other programs that have already figured out who qualifies:
We don’t have a reduced utility program, and everybody in SMCISD gets free lunch. So this will take some tinkering.
Jane: “By golly, let’s vote on this!”
The vote: 7-0. Everyone is excited.
Look out! September 1st, they should be here.
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Item 14: EMS coverage
Here’s the county lines around Hays:
So Guadalupe is directly below, where two corners meet.
Zooming in on that region:
That is San Marcos plus the northern corner of Guadalupe county.
Historically, San Marcos-Hays County EMS has covered that little yellow bit, because we’ve got better road access to it than anyone else, and so it’s safest for residents. But of course, San Marcos-Hays County EMS was dissolved last year because they had decided to unionize.
Every school has its school zones, where you have to drop your speed when the light are flashing. We all know this.
Currently, here’s our school zone hours:
7:00 am to 8:30 am
3:00 pm to 4:30 pm
That’s supposed to cover all schools. However, Blanco Vista and SMHS don’t really fit:
Blanco Vista isn’t in SMCISD, but it is in the city limits.
So your new school zone hours are going to be:
6:30 am to 9:00 am
2:30 pm to 5:00 pm
This is good, because we want to keep kids safe. It is also annoying, because school zones are annoying.
But hey, keeping kids alive is more important than not being annoyed.
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Items 22-23: the budget
There’s an odd state law that requires cities to vote on a tax rate cap, before they vote on the actual tax rate. They will vote on the tax rate on September 15th. Today is just setting the upper bound.
Decision: the tax rate will be ¢65.15 or lower. That’s the rate from last year.
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However, there will most likely be utility rate increases – this is most of what they discussed at the 3 pm workshops.
If this passes, an average house would pay about $7 more per month.
They’ll vote on these increases in September.
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My $0.02: We haven’t increased department budgets to keep up with inflation in 3 years. That means we’re in the hole about $740K this year, and $1.4 million over 3 years. (Amanda asks about this, specifically.)
I’d prefer to see very small yearly increases, rather than walloping taxpayers with giant increases every now and then.
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Item 25: Bobcat Shuttle Service
Did you know that everyone in San Marcos can ride the Bobcat Shuttle for free? I did not!
A good transit system has frequent buses and routes that cover the whole town. If the bus comes once per hour, and you have to make a transfer to a second bus to get to work, it’s going to eat up hours of your day. A bad transit system has incomplete coverage and infrequent buses.
But there’s a chicken-and-egg problem with transit:
If you have a bad transit system, you won’t have many riders. So you want to build a good transit system.
Good transit systems are expensive. You need funding. You qualify for federal funding by having lots of riders.
See the problem? Riders won’t show up until you’ve got a great system, but you can’t get a great system until the riders show up.
This is why we’ve merged with Texas State – they’ve got high ridership, and so this helps us qualify for more funding.
There is huge need in San Marcos for a great system. Owning a car is really expensive – like 12K per year. If we can build it, a great transit system would improve the lives of many people in town.
This is how cities address affordability: they can’t lower car prices, but they can provide cheaper alternatives.
(I combined the 3 pm public comment with the 6 pm public comment, in the first post.)
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Workshop 1: The Budget
It is heavy-duty budget season!
July 25th is the day that City staff finds out exactly how much tax money we’ve received. This is the first concrete draft budget that Council has looked at.
The whole thing has to be approved in the next month.
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Background: How’s San Marcos these days?
We’re growing:
That’s probably an undercount. The city thinks we’re more like 90,000 people.
The next two slides take some thinking.
First: here’s how much the median home owner pays in property taxes to the city:
So home owners pay more here than elsewhere.
However:
the city spends less per resident.
This is because the deck is stacked against San Marcos in some key ways. The only one they mention in this presentation is this, though:
We’ve got more tax-exempt land than most places, in part because the university is our central giant business, but they don’t pay taxes.
You all know about inflation. The city knows about it, too:
However, the city has not increased taxes to keep up with inflation. Department budgets have not changed in 3 years. This year it would take roughly $720K extra to keep up with inflation.
We’ve been extremely careful in watching our pennies, and we are weathering this economy in a stable way. So that’s nice.
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Onto the budget!
There are actually many different independent budgets. Each one has its own revenue and spending. So the Electric Fund is funded by utility rates and impact fees, the General Fund is funded by taxes, etc.
Here’s all of them:
The big one is the General Fund. Here’s how it gets funded:
Here’s some of the major pressures on it:
SMPD gets 5% raises and SMFD gets 4.5% raises, because they’re allowed to unionize. That’s what collective bargaining gets you. Texas outlaws all other public unions besides those, though. So everyone else gets 3% raises. It’s not the slightest bit fair.
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Also: this year we had our first round of Participatory Budgeting experiment. The public was asked to submit project ideas, and then we all got to vote on which projects to fund.
Here’s how it went:
Lorenzo: That’s pretty sad. Only 117 votes? Answer: It was our first rodeo! We’ll promote the projects and try to drum up more enthusiasm.
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Back to the General Fund:
Basically, things are less grim than they feared.
We’re going to have a balanced budget this year, without raising taxes:
For the next three years, we might be on track to have a balanced budget, or we might get unlucky.
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The new property tax rate
Last year, staff presented three different options to Council. Councilmembers all said which one they liked best. City staff went and finalized a bunch of details before the final vote. Then half the council members changed their mind at the last second.
This year, staff did not outline multiple options. They just said, “Hey, we don’t need to raise taxes to make the budget work.”
[Note: I actually think this is a bad idea. The budget is not working! We are not keeping up with inflation. Small incremental tax hikes are much better than having to occasionally lob giant tax hikes at the public.]
Anyway:
They’re not actually voting on the tax rate until September. But for planning purposes, staff is working with the same tax rate as last year, ¢65.15. On a $300,000 house, that works out to about $1,950.
Question: Is Council okay with setting a maximum tax rate of ¢65.15? This is the tax rate we had last year.
Everyone is on board with this.
Note: This is just the tax rate cap. They’re just saying the tax rate won’t be higher than ¢65.15.
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The rest of the budget
The other major funds are:
Hotel Tax Fund: this has to be used for tourism and museums and things like that.
Community Enhancement Fund: there’s a big discussion about streetlights, maintenance, and who keeps track of where they should be located.
Electric Utility Fund: your electricity supplier
Water and wastewater: ie all your water hook-ups to get fresh water and get your toilet waste taken away and cleaned
Stormwater: major projects to keep people’s homes from flooding when it rains
Resource Recovery Fund: think trash and recycling
Transit Fund: busses and bike lanes
Airport Fund: airport repair, etc.
Council has a big discussion about a lot of rate hikes:
So the average house would see a $7 increase in their monthly bills.
They spend a lot of time discussing the pros and cons of all these. For example:
The Community Benefit Charge: It’s supposed to cover streetlights and lighting. How do we decide which streets need streetlights? Who is being neglected because the city hasn’t installed their lights or repaired them?
The Electric fund: our bond rating got downgraded a few years ago. This means that it costs more for us to borrow money to complete electric projects. Can we fix this by raising rates? Would it save tax payers money in the long run? (Yes, it would.)
The Stormwater fund: it shows a $0 increase above, but that’s a mistake. This fall, they’re going to roll out a stormwater master plan, and it’s going to take a rate hike to pay for projects in the Wallace Addition and Bishop/Belvin. We have a lot of flooding in town, just from ordinary thunderstorms.
Bottom line: pretty much everyone says “Yes” to all of these increases (besides Alyssa), but none of this is binding yet. They’re just telling staff that they’re open to these rate increases.
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Workshop 2: EMS billing
San Marcos-Hays County EMS was dissolved last year because they had decided to unionize. Police and fire can unionize, and private EMS companies can unionize. But the leaders in Hays County lost their fucking minds when their private EMS company decided to unionize. So Kyle and Dripping Springs each split off to form their own EMS, and San Marcos was stuck holding the bag.
The problem – of course – is that health care is super broken in the US. How do you set rates that are fair within a system that is a hopeless mess?
In San Marcos:
About half of all EMS calls are Medicare patients
About 6-12% more calls are from people covered by Medicaid
About 25% have insurance
The rest – 13%-19% – don’t have insurance and can’t really pay.
You make up astronomical rates in order to get payments from insurance. Then insurance covers some of it, or none of it, and then people are screwed over for the rest. It’s a terrible system.
San Marcos cannot solve the real, underlying problem.
Here is what’s proposed:
The city can offer certain discounts to help residents:
The other major problem is the time crunch. If Council doesn’t approve something, then the new San Marcos EMS can’t start the paperwork with insurance companies and Medicare and Medicaid, so that they can be operating by October 1st.
Everyone on Council was uncomfortable with everything. It was super rushed – they only had 15 minutes – and no one had time to thoroughly understand the details.
They did give it the thumbs up, so that EMS could make its October 1st opening deadline, but the plan is to revisit these decisions.
Short meeting! All about sprawl: who should pay for the costs of sprawl? where is the new sprawl going to be built? Plus a little about the river. Welcome to the new 2026-2027 season of the San Marcos City Council!
We need more tax from businesses, we could put them south of town.
Promote river tourism.
Provide services for elderly.
Support Chief Standridge and law enforcement.
THBC issues liquor licenses: why does San Marcos require a CUP? It’s redundant.
We should position ourselves as a major player on I35.
Onto the meeting!
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Item 7: Riverbridge Ranch PID
River Bridge Ranch is a development going in way east of I35.
This is where River Bridge Ranch will be:
It’s one of MANY that are going in around Redwood:
Those are just the ones that have come up in the past year or two. There are way more that are already being built.
In general, I’m not a fan of any of these! This is sprawl. There is no commerce planned. There is not significant density being planned. This will require lots of driving for all residents. It costs the city more support to sprawl than the city gains in new property taxes.
(Note: back in 2023 the plan was for plenty of stores and dense housing:
A lot of that – especially July 7th – is me complaining about how PIDs are a shell game. I guess I’ll spare everyone yet another rambly rant on the same topic, but feel free to click through if you’re curious.
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Since January, the city negotiated for some extra perks: an amenity center that is open to the public, some shade trees, various financial details. Those are fine.
Still all sprawl!
Still, the 2026 Council is very enthusiastic about how much better this deal is than what was proposed in January.
The vote:
Oh well! It’s coming!
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Items 9-10: Water and wastewater impact fees
Here’s the scenario: when these developments get built far away from town, the city has to run utility lines and SMPD and EMS service out to them.
This is cheaper when it’s close, and more expensive when it’s far away. Makes sense!
Today we’re focusing on water and wastewater. Think about all the people who will live in all these developments:
They all need plumbing that connects them to water. None of them will be on septic, so the developers are all arranging ways for wastewater plumbing to leave their house and take it to a wastewater treatment plant.
These costs are set. There’s no reducing it, because we already approved the sprawl.
Environmental impact: there’s a lot of wasted habitats and lost drinking water when you convert undeveloped greenspace to big green lawns. There’s a lot of carbon emissions from the extra driving.
Gentle density – think 1940s mainstreet, not New York City – solves a lot of problems.
The city brings in enough tax money from each block to cover the costs of infrastructure.
Cars are really expensive to own – about $11K per year. But you can’t have functional public transportation until people are living more closely together. Shops, schools, and jobs are easier to walk or bike to. Etc. Gentle density allows people to get by without owning a car.
Saving greenspace and wildlife habitats, and not pouring out our clean drinking water to water people’s lawns, etc. Win-win.
Sprawl is bad! Gentle density is good. Go tell it on the mountain.
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But the developments are coming. Who should pay for the infrastructure?
So who is going to pay to run drinking water out to all these houses, and run their wastewater over to a treatment plant?
There are two sources of money:
Raise rates on everyone’s water and wastewater bill. Everyone in the city pays a little bit, and the infrastructure gets built.
Charge the developers an impact fee, which covers the cost of the new infrastructure. This raises the cost of the houses in those developments.
Which is more fair?
They both seem unfair!
Raising everyone’s rates seems unfair, because the regular residents didn’t ask for ridiculous faraway sprawl.
Putting it all on the home buyers who buy new homes also seems unfair – we know the population is growing. It’s much harder for millenials to afford a home than it was for boomers. Communities should support younger generations.
Fortunately, you can do a little of each.
The real answer is:
Charge big impact fees for sprawl that doesn’t serve the next generation
Split the cost with rate payers to cover the costs of infill, affordable housing, and environmental housing that make San Marcos better for everyone.
Let’s dive in and see what we decided.
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Today’s topic: Should we raise water and wastewater impact fees?
First off, we already have impact fees. This isn’t a brand new idea. We last updated them in 2018.
Here’s the 2018 rates and what’s being proposed for 2026:
(The resolution is crappy because these weren’t in the packet. I had to screenshot them from the video.)
Let me point out a few things:
These are the fees on a typical house. It would scale up for an apartment or a large business, etc, according to how much water you use.
Going from $6,485 to $25,680 is a huge jump!
It puts us right in the middle of all these other towns that have increased their fees since the post-covid inflation price spike
This is why it’s better to do smaller rate hikes more frequently – less sticker shock.
What does this chart mean in terms of the two sources of money?
If we adopt the proposed fees, what’s the split between rate-payers and people buying new homes? Is it 50-50? Is it 60-30? What’s the split?
Answer: the rate chart above puts 100% of the new infrastructure costs on developers and people who buy new homes.
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What does the public say during public comment?
It’s mostly developers and real estate folks:
Don’t charge the same fee for infill as for sprawl! [Note: I totally agree]
Can the city double-check it’s math? Are you sure you’re going to build that much infrastructure in ten years [Answer: yes, they are]
This will have a major impact on new-build home prices. They’ll go up by $20K. [I think this is correct.]
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What does council say?
Jane: when would these new rates kick in? Answer: All homes that are platted by October 1st would get 2018 fees. Anything that gets platted after that would get charged the new rates.
Amanda: can we lower these impact fees for good kinds of development? Infill, green development, affordable housing, etc? Answer: Yes. The best way to do that is through credits and rebates. You’d set these rates now as the upper bound for bad sprawl, and then create incentives.
Informal poll: who wants a future discussion of credits/rebates for good development? (ie affordable housing, environmental sustainability, and infill housing)
Yes: Alyssa, Amanda, Jane, Lorenzo, Josh
No: Shane, Matthew
(Shane and Matthew are so weird. “Hell no! We hate affordable housing, environmental sustainability, and infill!” Ok punks.)
Anyway: great. Credits/rebates for good development will come back in a future meeting.
Josh addresses the developers who showed up for the public comment.
Josh: Hey developers, what would help you all with these impact fees? Kissing Tree Developer: There’s a number of things you could do:
Divide the city into districts, and charge Kissing Tree less than you charge developers east side of I35
At Kissing Tree, we purchase reclaimed water. You could give us a rebate for that.
You could roll this out slowly, let us get more building in under the old rates.
You could double-check your math and really make sure you’re going to build this much infrastructure.
City staff:
The costs are the costs. This was audited by an independent 3rd party. If you take the heat off developers, you are passing it on to everyone else.
Our treatment facilities take pressure off each other. We’re not big enough to justify districts.
Giving rebates for reclaimed water is exactly the kind of thing that Council can do.
Matthew: I’m a no. These costs are too high! I’m thinking of my friends without college educations. This isn’t family-friendly! Jane: So you want rate-payers to pay? Matthew: That’s the hard part. But we need to listen to developers – their livelihoods depend on it!
The vote: should we adopt the fees in the chart?
So there you have it.
Note: Like I said, these rates put the infrastructure costs 100% on developers and people who buy new homes. We are trusting Council to bring this back and offer credits/rebates for good development.
(Good development = affordable housing, environmentally sustainable, and infill.)
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That’s basically the whole meeting! There’s some formalities around Whisper and Trace developments, and some committee appointments, and allocating money for airport construction. But basically it was a very short meeting.
When San Marcos flooded in 2015, Council was worried about local businesses. They ran a campaign “San Marcos is Open”. It promoted river recreation and tourism.
It worked! Hotels did better than projected, and the Lion’s Club had their biggest year. But this is when the river began to get overcrowded.
By 2017, the city was more worried about over crowding and capacity issues.
Amanda: Can we talk to local stores about not promoting banned items? Answer: We used to work with HEB, but Walmart and Academy blew us off. When Buccees opens, we’ll have a visitor’s kiosk. That’s baked into the development agreement. Amanda: Maybe the Chamber of Commerce can take the lead here and work with retailers.
Jane: How far out is signage about banned items from Rio Vista gates? Do we put signage at the baseball fields? Answer: No. But sure! We can work on that.
Alyssa: Do we have a city TikTok account? Answer: Nope. Governor Abbott has banned cities from having TikTok accounts.
Alyssa: You could work with micro-influencers and collab with them, like Luis the food guy Answer: We do have a relationship with Luis!
Bottom line: We’re going to keep our river messaging focused on education, stewardship, park rules, etc.
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Workshop 2: Covid funding
A long time ago, we got two different sources of Covid money from the federal government.
and
Basically, we got about $20 million, and it made a huge difference.
Here’s how we spent it:
Now it’s all ending. All federal Covid money must be spent by December 31st.
As projects wind down, you want to re-allocate that money and get it spent as fast as possible.
Here’s the projects that have come in under budget:
Here’s where we’d like to spend it:
You can’t start any new projects – it has to already be part of Covid funding. BR3T does emergency housing and utility assistance. They’ve gotten about $250K in Covid money so far, so this brings them up to about $300K.
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What does Council think?
Alyssa: What does BR3T say? Can they use some of this on case management? Answer: Yes, they would like to use some of this on case management.
Amanda: Yeah, I came in at the end but it’s great. I hope we revisit our philosophy about only giving money for services and not case management.
Jane: Yes, big thanks.
Bottom line: 94.6% of Covid money has been spent, and we’re just trying to make sure we eke out this last bit by December.
Quick housekeeping post today – a recap of the council election fireworks so far, and the yearly wrap-up. The new season of San Marcos City Council starts next week! Happy July.
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Election season is going to be bonkers. You’ve probably seen it all on social media, but let me lay out the fireworks.
Let’s start from the beginning.
Three seats are up for election:
Mayor’s seat (incumbent: Jane Hughson)
Seat 3 (incumbent: Alyssa Garza)
Seat 4 (incumbent: Shane Scott)
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The drama:
Saturday, July 25th: Jane shocks everyone by announcing she is not running for re-election. Instead, she will be the campaign treasurer for Ryan Thomason, who is running for mayor. (He is a former council member from 10-15 years ago.)
Everyone takes the weekend to digest this.
Monday, July 27th: Amanda shocks everyone by announcing that she will now run for mayor, rather than completing the third year of her term. This is exciting and I am thrilled.
So now there are four council seats up for election:
Mayor (no incumbent)
Seat 3 (incumbent: Alyssa Garza)
Seat 4 (incumbent: Shane Scott)
Amanda’s former seat, Seat 6 (no incumbent)
Immediately, two current and former San Marcos local politicians – Lisa Prewitt and Miguel Arredondo – file to run for Seat 6. Lisa was on council about a decade ago, and Miguel has been on the school board for years.
Then! Thursday, July 30th: Jane shocks everyone again by announcing she’s going to run for Seat 3, challenging Alyssa Garza. Alyssa is a popular, two-term incumbent. What the hell?!
This is wild. It feels like Jane thought she could handpick her successor. Then when she realized the new generation might actually win over council, Jane lost her shit and felt like she had to wage war. It feels unhinged.
(And all within one week!)
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Current state of things:
Mayor: Amanda Rodriguez vs Ryan Thomason
Seat 3: Incumbent Alyssa Garza against current mayor Jane Hughson
Seat 4: Incumbent Shane Scott vs Heather Hunter
Seat 6: Lisa Prewitt, Juan Miguel Arredondo, and Bill Miller are all facing off.
The San Marxist 