Citizen Comment:
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.
But now we have a new company! Meet Lime Scooters:
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.
Today: Can the newly forming San Marcos EMS cover that little region?
Answer: Yes.
Great.
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Item 20: School zones
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.
Almost the whole 3 pm workshop is about the budget. By the 6 pm meeting, everything has been decided.
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!
Here’s a quick snapshot of the bus routes:
All the route and time info is here: Bobcat Shuttle : Texas State University
You can hop from city buses back and forth to Bobcat buses.
Here are the city routes:
And here’s the link: Local Bus Information | City of San Marcos, TX .
It sure would be nice to have one unified map!
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Let’s talk about transit for a sec:
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.
Also!! A great bus system is great for everyone:
When you replace cars with buses, you have much less traffic. Your roads will last longer. You can get places faster.
People who still need to drive their cars are better off. People who ride bikes are better off. The city is better off.
The San Marxist 