Hidey ho, Neighborino! We’re back. Will Council regulate data centers? Will this grandmother in Dunbar get her home repair nightmare resolved? (Seriously, her story is awful.) Get your zesty details here!
Let’s go:
Hours 0:00 – 5:07: Forming our policy on Data Centers, annexing Five Mile Dam parks, loopholes for downtown restaurants, and a total home repair horror story in Dunbar.
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: the yearly homeless Point in Time count, and the Homeless Action Plan that has been implemented by Southside over the past two years.
22 more at the public hearings, mostly for the Land Development Code.
(I just pooled them all together here.)
The biggest theme was of the night: Data Centers in the Land Development Code. (5 speakers during Citizen Comment, and another 19 at the public hearing.)
Roughly speaking, everyone said: “When you revise the land development code, either ban data centers altogether, or at least regulate them tightly. They’re terrible and we hate them.”
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Side note: several speakers had spent their morning at the Guadalupe Commissioners Court. Guadalupe County approved a whole package of tax breaks for a Cloudburst Data Center on 123, despite listening to four hours of public comment about how much everyone hates them.
To put it mildly, this smells corrupt. The only argument in favor of a data center is the money. There is zero upside to giving a data center tax breaks.
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Back to citizen comment. Non-Data-Center thoughts on the Land Development Code:
Don’t require bars to clean 100 feet from their door. 50 ft is plenty.
Serving food at all hours is fine, but don’t inadvertently ban food trucks downtown.
Most of the proposed amendments on housing density look good. But be careful with permeable pavers – they can stop working if you get the wrong kind.
Keep the watershed quality protection program presentation in P&Z. Even if they don’t vote on it, it’s important to cast sunlight on these things. (I strongly agree.)
Don’t remove the tree requirement for situations where there aren’t previous trees. The east side was farmland, and so what looks like “no trees” was actually cleared by people.
Mandate rainwater capture and gray water re-use
Targeted stormwater fee with offsets for water innovation
No potable water for any cooling
Note to Council: I strongly agree with keeping tree requirements. Developments without trees age really badly. We are talking about farmland, east of 35, which is also the more economically vulnerable side of town. If you allow developers to skip the trees, then the residents’ homes will not gain as much value over the years, the way it would on the west side.
We need a tree canopy in Texas to make the summer tolerable. You absolutely must require tree planting, unless the developer is putting in actual xeriscapes. (I’m okay with a xeriscape exception.)
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Other comment topics, unrelated to the Land Development Code:
We need to fight for immigrants and their safety. For example, AI entrenches a systematic bias in our health care.
We need to bring industries to bring in tax dollars
The city needs to stop rewarding incompetence
We need more public and affordable housing. Also this would ease homelessness.
Onto the meeting!
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Item 9: Five Mile Dam Park
Back in November 2024, the city bought Five Mile Dam parks from the county. This is where the youth soccer leagues have all their games:
The idea was that we didn’t want the county to privatize the soccer fields, and the county would only let us buy the soccer fields if we also took these two Blanco River parks:
This is the Blanco River, but the river runs underground and so the river bed often looks dry.
The county charged us $0, because they REALLY did not want those parks any more. (Presumably because of upkeep and liability.)
Readers, meet Dudley Johnson:
and Randall Wade Vetter:
Dudley Johnson, Randall Wade Vetter: meet my readers. Go say hi. You’ll get along beautifully.
Anyway, Dudley Johnson Park and Randall Wade Vetter Park now belong to the city, and so at Tuesday’s meeting, we formally annexed them into city limits.
Note: According to the deed, the land will stay parkland forever. Go enjoy it.
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Item 11: Amending the Land Development Code
We update the Land Development Code every few years. This means we’ve accumulated 300+ things to address – some big, some small.
We saw this briefly back in March, when Council was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of 300+ changes. They postponed it till this week, to give the public and themselves time to wade through it.
The biggest issue is data centers. They’re so new that they’re not yet in the development code, so we need to build those policies from scratch. But there are also a lot of more minor topic.
Note: this is only the first half of the first reading. They paused because it was getting so late. There will be at least two more meetings where they can hash out the details.
Data Centers
Let’s start here. What do we want our data center policy to be?
Five people spoke during Citizen Comment and 19 more during the public hearing. Everyone hates data centers!
Issue #1: Zones and Permits. Should data centers be allowed in just Heavy Industrial? Should they be allowed in other zones? Should they require a special permit?
Jane and Amanda each propose an amendment, so we have dueling amendments.
Jane’s proposal: all data centers should need a special Council-approved permit, regardless of zone.
Amanda’s proposal: no data centers anywhere, at all, in any zone.
The conversation kind of overlaps on these, but they each get their own vote.
The votes:
Jane’s amendment: Should every data center require a special Council-approved permit?
Data centers will all be required to get a specific Conditional Use Permit from Council.
2. Amanda’s amendment: Should data centers be banned altogether in city limits?
So Data Centers will not be banned altogether.
My $0.02: This is the right outcome. I’m a techno-optimist. There is a version of data centers, somewhere over the rainbow, where they run on reclaimed water and renewable energy.
I don’t want to ban data centers – I want them to be well-regulated. So I’m glad Amanda’s amendment did not pass.
(Also Shane’s votes don’t really make sense. He wants data centers banned or unregulated, but nothing in between?)
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Issue #2: What counts as a Data Center?
Here’s what Staff proposes as a definition:
Amanda proposes: Add “Cryptocurrency mining and facilities”.
This vote passes. The definition has now been modified to include that use.
Josh: Data centers have been around forever on a small scale. Do old school data centers fall under this definition? Or just these giant new AI data centers?
Jane: What if a big business has a room full of servers, but it’s not their primary function as a business? Do they count as a data center?
Everyone agrees that this is incomplete. You want to regulate a building of computers if it’s hoovering up lots of electricity and water and spewing pollution. You don’t want to micromanage a small architecture firm who has their own servers for running CAD. We need some notions of scale and purpose.
Everyone’s going to look into this and bring back suggestions for the next meeting.
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Issue #3: Potable water for data centers:
Amanda proposes: No data center may use a potable water source for cooling purposes.
In other words, data centers must either use reclaimed water, or find an alternative cooling technology. But no wasting massive amounts of drinking water.
My $0.02: this is great!! This is what I mean when I say I am a techo-optimist! Renewable energy is cheap and available, if Texas wants it. If data centers decide to invest in non-potable water cooling, then we can solve two of the major environmental problems.
We can imagine a world where we don’t sacrifice the environment to data centers, and in turn, big tech executives accept regulations.
This passes 7-0.
This is probably my favorite amendment of the night.
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Smaller Data Center Proposals:
Amanda: Increase setbacks to 1000 ft near residential zones, hospitals, hotels, agricultural, schools, and daycares.
Amanda: Extra permit required for on-site generators
Jane: On-site generators must meet Tier 4 emissions standards
Amanda: Noise limit of 60 dB at property line
All of those pass.
Matthew floats the idea of requiring a supermajority to approve a data center, but says he’ll bring something back at the next meeting.
Matthew has generally been very quietly pro-data centers for the past two years, so I don’t think he’s serious here.
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Non-Data Center LDC Amendments:
Waiting Periods:
Suppose a developer wants to build some apartments, but they get turned down when they apply to re-zoning the land. How long do they have to wait until they can re-apply and try again? The answer is “it’s complicated”.
Here is the technical answer: it depends on how the motion was phrased. This is the hair that is getting split:
Situation 1: The motion is, “A vote to approve a new zoning,” and the vote fails.
Situation 2: The motion is, “A vote to deny the new zoning,” and the vote passes.
Situation 1 does NOT trigger a waiting period, and Situation 2 DOES trigger a waiting period of one year. It’s very subtle!
Council uses this power carefully. If Council likes a project, but the public hates it, they’re going to use Situation 1. The public feels like they got a win, and Council buys themselves some time to thread the needle. The developer jumps right back into the game.
If Council does not like the project at all, they’re going to use Situation 2, and put some nails in the coffin.
This is exactly what happened with the data center
In March 2025, P&Z denied the Mayberry Data Center. Maberry appealed the decision to Council. In August, Council voted on the appeal.
Appeals require a supermajority, so Maberry needed 6 votes. But the vote to overturn went 5-2.
The key detail: the vote was phrased as Situation 1, not Situation 2. They failed to approve the rezoning. But they did NOT deny it.
There is no waiting period. They can waltz in tomorrow.
So there you have it.
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Bottom line: This application is dead. But Council left a trail of bread crumbs for the applicant to re-apply to P&Z and get a better outcome.
That was Council using the loophole. Unsurprisingly, it made the public confused and angry.
And rightfully so! What do you mean, “not approve” is different from “deny”? Get outta here. Why are you playing word games with everyone?
A lot of community members thought the waiting period was being violated, and were angry that they were being jerked around.
Which brings us to tonight
Again, both Amanda and Jane have proposed amendments to fix this confusion:
Jane’s amendment: Keep the loophole, but make it EXTRA clear.
Amanda’s amendment: Eliminate the loophole. Situations 1 and 2 would both lead to a one year waiting period.
Jane’s argument: Council likes the loophole! Sometimes we want to give the developer another attempt, without making them wait a year. (She did not say, “For example, with Maberry last August with the data center!” but listen: yes, they did that intentionally.)
At any rate, they only vote on Jane’s proposal:
So there you have it. Loopholes 4-evah.
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Bars Serving Food
There has always been tension in San Marcos between the Serious Grown Ups and the College Party Kids. (We all agree to ignore how the Serious Grown Ups often used to be College Party Kids.)
Decades ago, the Serious Grown Ups got mad about the number of bars on the square. So they capped the number of alcohol permits.
Then the Serious Grown Ups got mad because they wanted to have a beer at a restaurant downtown. So they added in Restaurant alcohol permits.
What are these caps? As of 2026, you can only have 14 bars and 25 restaurants downtown that serve alcohol. (There are an unlimited number of permits available for the rest of the city. It’s only capped downtown. It’s almost as if we want you to drive after a few drinks.)
What do you do if you want to open the 15th bar downtown? All the bar permits are taken. So you try to get a restaurant alcohol permit, and sell as little food as possible. This is part of why the Rooftop got shut down.
The city then plays cat-and-mouse games trying to figure out if you’re a real restaurant, or just a fake-out-secret-bar-restaurant. At one point, the city would track sales, and they wanted a certain percent of sales to come from food. Then they switched to saying “you must serve food for two meals, each of which lasts four hours”. But what if the restaurant is only open from 12-5 on Sundays? Etc.
Jane proposes an amendment: If you’re a restaurant, you must always serve meals, any time the business is open.
Amanda: What if the kitchen closes at midnight?
Jane: This will be EASIER for restaurants! I’m helping.
Alyssa: Yes, but most of these downtown restaurants close their kitchen down early.
Lorenzo: It’s a loophole. If you want a restaurant permit, then be a restaurant and sell food. If we think this is a dumb loophole, we should offer more bar alcohol permits. But until we fix the loophole, we should make them follow the rules. If you have a restaurant permit, you have to sell food.
The vote:
Interesting!
I probably would have voted “no”. Who cares if a restaurant shuts their kitchen down early and just becomes a bar after 11 pm?
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In the end, they postpone the rest of the LDC amendments, because it’s getting late. They have not discussed:
Valid Petition procedures
Qualified Watershed Protection Plans
Parkland dedication
Housing density and landscaping
Lorenzo and Amanda both have a bunch more amendments
Increasing PSA waiting period from 6 to 12 months
I thought this was funny. They voted to postpone this item:
and very quietly, Jane mutters, “What is wrong with y’all?”
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Item 6 – reallocating the last bits of ARPA funds
All remaining Covid money has to be spent by December 2026. We’ve got a little bit freed up, to give to other projects. (Discussed here.)
However! This plan is getting derailed because of a home repair nightmare, which has been unfolding behind the scenes at Mission Able. It’s horrifying!
Here’s the scoop: the home owner lives in Dunbar, in a home that has been in her family since 1900. She keeps it immaculate and organized, but it needed foundation repair.
Mission Able supplied a contractor, who pulled in some foundation workers with no equipment. They start jockeying around with the house. The floor buckles and splits – literally, while she’s sitting in her living room. They wedge it up on cinder blocks and bricks. Some pipes burst and some walls split. They take off.
The home owner chased down their insurance, only to find out that they’re uninsured. (She even asked the contractor if they were insured, ahead of time, because the vibes were off.)
It is true that houses will shift and you will get cracks, when you re-level a foundation. But this is not that. This is honest-to-god 6″ gaps where snakes and critters can wander in. Her own granddaughter is too scared to spend the night, because of the gaps in the walls.
It’s been like this since last summer, and sounds like a nightmare. I believe there is now a second contractor working there, trying to remedy the situation?
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Council tries to figure out what went wrong. Should the city be requiring more outcomes and metrics from the grant recipients? Is the standard city oversight broken in? Is the operational structure of Mission Able broken?
Everyone sort of protests. The city oversight mechanisms were not triggered, because the first contractor didn’t pull any permits. The second contractor has pulled permits, but the actual oversight occurs when the inspection happens, and they’re not there yet.
Mission Able protests – we want to learn from this disaster and become better at what we do! We’ve done 149 projects last year, and this is the only bad one.
The plan: the city is going to meet separately with Mission Able and with the homeowner, and do a courtesy inspection to get a full sense of what needs to be done, and report back. No decision on the $100K for Mission Able tonight.
(In the meantime, we did fund the other $100K to Operation Triage.)
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Items 12-17: Some very big dollar amounts:
“CIP” stands for Capital Improvement Projects, which are the giant multi-year projects like redoing all the drainage in a neighborhood. You pay for these with grants and bonds.
If you want to see some big numbers, check these out:
yessir, those are some enormous sums of money!
I didn’t listen terribly closely to the details, but everything sounded kosher.
“PIT” stands for “Point in Time”. The PIT Count is a fixed day in January, where cities nationwide try to actually figure how many people are homeless in their communities. Each city assembles a team of people who go out into the community and try to actually count and talk to as many homeless people as they can find on that day. (PIT count 2024, PIT count 2025)
The rules are set by the Housing and Urban Development agency, (HUD). If you complete a PIT count, it helps you apply for federal funding.
For unsheltered, think people in cars, and people outside.
For sheltered, think Hays County Women’s Shelter, Southside, Marla’s Place, but not people in hotels or motels.
The PIT count is not perfect. But it gives us useful information.
The blue column is people that they saw, but didn’t get to talk to. The blue is included in the orange group.
The gray column – Sheltered – is much smaller in 2026 than in 2025. This is because in 2025, the PIT count day ended up being a “cold weather night”, where Southside was open to everyone.
(I’m not sure why the chart has those weird gaps.)
Ages of people they were able to talk to:
and gender:
and race:
Generally homeless people have significant obstacles in their lives:
Almost all the homeless people in Hays County are in San Marcos:
They drove out to Wimberley and Dripping Springs, but did not see any people there. In Wimberly, they saw evidence of encampments, but didn’t actually see any homeless people.
Here’s where we’ve landed over the past six years:
Again, PIT counts aren’t perfect. You have to be careful when you’re looking at data like this. You can’t conclude that we’re solving homelessness – it could be that people are hiding, because they’re worried about ICE.
One presenter says that whenever ICE rumors pop up on social media, the line at the Food Bank gets cut in half. (That is so deeply depressing on so many levels.)
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We also have a second source for homeless data: the public schools.
All the school districts collect this data at the beginning of the school year:
This year’s data:
So SMCISD has an estimated 105 K-12 students who are housing insecure. This doesn’t include their parents or any baby siblings who aren’t yet in school.
One offhand comment by the presenter: Statistically, apparently babies are the age group most likely to be evicted, and children aged 2-5 are the next most likely to be evicted.
Pretty grim commentary on our society!
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At last year’s presentation, they said there was an urgent need to include homeless people in emergency action plans. For example, if we have a winter storm, how do we keep homeless people safe? How do we prevent families from freezing in their cars?
This year: progress! Relevant groups have come together and are working on this.
This year’s ask: the Homeless Management Information System. (HMIS)
It’s extremely difficult for case managers to keep track of details of homeless people. Which doctors has this person seen? What medications are they on? Do we need to locate their birth certificate or social security card? Etc.
HMIS is the system run by the Texas Homeless Network, so that everyone can pool their data and coordinate care. It costs $450 per user.
Can San Marcos help pay for this?
Answer: You bet! We’re planning on putting $9000 towards this at the May Homeless Coalition meeting.
They focused on families primarily. Like we saw a moment ago, there are at least 105 kids in SMCISD who are housing-insecure.
(But not exclusively – they did also help individuals.)
There are three main tentpoles to their plan:
The presentation walked through each of the tentpoles individually.
So first, Emergency Assistance:
Think: car repair so someone can get to their job, or covering a two-week gap in pay when they get a new job, or covering part of a high electric bill, etc. You don’t want a small emergency to snowball into a big emergency.
Next: Eviction Prevention
Both of those categories are where you see the most bang for the buck.
Being evicted is expensive, destabilizing, and sends families down a cascade of trauma. But preventing eviction can be quick, cheap, and help get someone through an isolated hard time. Win-win.
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This last category morphed over time. This is for families who have lost their housing.
They started with Rapid Rehousing:
What they said was that San Marcos doesn’t yet have the infrastructure to carry out this kind of program. Also, HUD used to fund this kind of program under Biden, but of course now everything is a dumpster fire.
It was leading to staff burnout and having to turn away lots of families, and generally awful for everyone involved.
So for Phase II, they switched to Transitional Housing:
Basically, they’d have 20 families stay for 60 days at Southside, all together as a cohort. They’d work with these families really closely, bring in a ton of community partners, and try to transition them to permanent housing.
Here’s a bunch of partners they collaborate with:
So that’s an outline of the main programs they implemented.
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But wait! There’s more! With the $800K, they also spruced up Southside:
which is good.
Some budget details:
This shows how expensive the Rapid Rehousing was in Phase 1, and how many more families they were able to serve with the second model.
And here’s some general financial breakdown:
and some general takeaways:
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What does Council say?
The million dollar question is: what happens when the Covid money runs out? Can we keep all this going?
They are working on it! They have enough money to keep it going through January 2027, and they are pursuing grants and stuff to keep these programs going.
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Listen, let me be a moral scold for a sec:
We know how to solve homelessness. There is no mystery. We just aren’t willing to pay for it.
Nationally, it would cost under $10 billion to end homelessness. But homeless people cost over $11 billion each year, as is! Think ER visits, untreated mental illness and addictions, and jails.
It’s more expensive to be cruel to people! Isn’t that wild?
Again, there’s no mystery here. Republicans slash funding for homelessness programs, over and over again, and here we are.
There are lots of rumors of inconsistency and favoritism in city politics, like which nonprofits get extensions for paperwork, and which people get on boards and commissions.
It was upsetting when the river was getting destroyed and trashed at Rio Vista, but the idea of charging admission is also upsetting.
Great job at the 3 pm meeting. Keep remembering that you’re in charge of of taxpayer money.
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Item 13: $740K in CDBG money
“CDBG” stands for Community Development Block Grant. This is money that San Marcos gets from the federal department of Housing and Urban Development.
Local nonprofits apply to San Marcos for the money. Today is a rough draft of how to allocate the money to the nonprofits. The final decision will be in July.
Because it’s federal money, there are a bunch of constraints on how it can be spent.
First is Public Services. This is capped at $111K.
These are all the nonprofits that applied, and the amounts that staff is recommending:
So there are definitely some weird ones, right?
Business and Community Lenders: apparently this is a brand new nonprofit. City staff said that it was all or nothing. If they only got a partial funding, they wouldn’t be able to get up and running. Since we couldn’t do the whole $100K, they got stuck.
HOME Center: HOME Center does great work. They do extremely intensive case management work to find stable, longterm housing for chronically homeless people. They navigate severe mental health issues, addiction, physical health, you name it. They find long-lost birth certificates needed for paperwork. Etc. It’s weird to give them only $5K. (This has been a flashpoint before.)
Here are the other two categories, Projects and Administration:
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A few other details:
this presentation was planned around $740K, but we’re actually receiving more like $770K. So there’s some breathing room here.
Jane: Yeah, we’ve been getting $770K since the 90s.
2. There are actually two pots of money: CDBG and HSAB.
“HSAB” stands for Human Services Advisory Board. This is city money, given out in grants to nonprofits.
It’s always been a mess, having two separate pots of money that overlap in purpose. So they’re trying to align the two processes. Next year, it will be more like a single process, but we’re not there yet.
3. CDBG money requires a LOT of paperwork and tracking by the nonprofits, because it’s federal money, so there is federal reporting. HSAB money is much simpler.
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What does Council say?
Alyssa: Is there a scoring matrix? Outcomes? Deliverables? Survey results of people who are served by these nonprofits? Public opinion of the CDBG process is not good. Are there metrics on how many nonprofits can’t navigate the application process? Answers: Yes on scoring matrix. Yes on outcomes and deliverables. But we don’t require the nonprofits to survey their participants. They do submit quarterly reports, though.
Amanda: Why is HOME center so low? Answer: We tried to prioritize immediate need versus longterm need.
Lorenzo: We’re asking HOME to do a lot of federal paperwork, for only $5K.
Here’s the summary of the HOME application:
Amanda: Can we cover transportation and medical needs, at least? Can we bump them up to $12,200, out of that extra money that is showing up?
Answer: Yes. But not tonight.
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Jane: We’re spending $60K to light the plaques at Dunbar on the History Walk? Shouldn’t that come out of the Arts fund? Answer: It’s considered a park amenity, to light the path. And this is coming out of the Projects category, not Public Services.
Josh: Does the applicant list stay stable over the years? Answer: No, the number of applicants has increased. More nonprofits are willing to deal with all the massive paperwork for CDBG.
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There’s no decision tonight – this is just giving staff feedback on this first draft.
In July, Council is going to see the HSAB money and CDBG money side by side. So then they can say things like, “Ok, HOME asked for $35K from one and $30K from the other. What if we give them all $65 from HSAB instead?”
That’s the goal – to be able to divvy up both pots of money using one united big picture of all nonprofit applications.
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Item 11: Time for a digression!
This item was in the consent agenda, and was approved without discussion.
I just want to share with you some gnarly photos in the packet:
Pretty cool, right?
Weirdly compelling!
I see you, structural steel elements of Clarifier No 401 at the Wastewater Treatment Plant. You look tired.
What a composition.
In this triptych, we ask ourselves, “Who is really the rusty one? This wastewater treatment plant …or ourselves?”
Who among us is not threaded by decaying bolts?
Hey, soldered plate with tiny cobwebs: me too.
These photos are part of a larger collection that can be found at this exhibit:
Disclaimer: do not go visit that exhibit!
End of the art tour. Let’s go back to the council meeting!
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Item 5: Entry fees at Rio Vista:
They finalize this fee structure for Rio Vista park:
And they brought up entry bracelets!
They’re looking into ordering non-digital entry bracelets for locals. First one would be free, but you’d have to pick it up in person.
Thanks, Parks Department!
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Item 16: Salvage from Demo Sites
I am not sure what’s getting built here, but the Pennington Funeral Home is getting demolished:
This is on Comanche, one block up from Little HEB.
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Let’s take a quick field trip! That isn’t the original Pennington building.
It’s ye old Rogers Building, on the corner of Hopkins and LBJ! Right now it’s some bar called Bazaar.
It changes hands so often that you can date yourself, according to what was there when you moved to San Marcos. I personally moved here during the All Nighter Diner era.
After that, it was the Gray Horse Saloon for awhile, I think? It’s been the Wine Bar, and Vodka Street, and maybe something else.
After all that, Mayor Jane and Matthew Mendoza decided to see if other nonprofits could repurpose parts of the building. Like: take a ceiling fan! take some filing cabinets! Use these beams in your home rehab project! Etc.
It sounds like some organizations were able to salvage some good stuff.
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Which brings us to tonight: what if all demolitions were scrapped for parts, first?
Sure, why not?
Lorenzo: As long as this doesn’t get bogged down in red tape.
Note: yes, this is a real danger. You don’t want to delay things by a week for some dusty 30-year-old ceiling fans.
Matthew: maybe we can offer a discount if the owner lets others salvage building parts!
City Lawyer: As long as this isn’t the dangerous buildings.
So city staff will bring something back.
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Item 17: Community Partnership
Back in 2018, the city formed a committee with SMCISD and Hays County. It’s been a LONG time since the committee has done anything.
Alyssa has been on the committee for years, and they’ve never met.
Today’s item is to brainstorm agenda topics for the committee, to justify firing it back up again and scheduling a first meeting.
Ideas:
Trying to acquire vacant lots up for sale. (I assume this is referring to the land next to Centro.)
Use of equipment and facilities during extreme weather events and emergencies
Joint planning to formalize resources and planning
Matthew: Can’t we just meet and plan topics?
(That is my question, too! This seems unnecessary.)
Jane: But what if the topics are only relevant to TWO entities?
(I don’t know why Jane is overthinking this. Surely adults can handle that however they want.)
Josh: What if we invite Texas State to join? Answer: Back in the day, President Trauth turned us down. We hadn’t re-extended the invite under President Damphouse, but I guess we could.
Lorenzo: that would just be the Core Four all over again. Answer: Sort of yes, sort of no.
Jane: Hays, SMCISD, and the city are all elected officials. Whereas if Texas State joins, it would be an appointed official.
Bottom line: They’ll reach out to Texas State, and maybe someday there will be a meeting.
Hays County ESD #1: Dripping Springs, Driftwood, Henly. Hays County ESD #2: Buda Hays County ESD #3: San Marcos Hays County ESD #7: Wimberley. Hays County ESD #9: Kyle and all the country bits around those towns.
This map of the districts is hard to read, but it’s the only one I could find:
In 2020, Wimberley and Buda were running their own EMS.
The other three ESDs all shared an EMS service. We all contracted out with San Marcos-Hays County EMS, (SMHC-EMS), a nonprofit EMS.
So San Marcos is stuck holding the bag, by ourselves. What do we want to do? Last August, we commissioned a study with some consultants.
January 2026: The consultants give us three choices:
Renew the contract with SMHC EMS and just carry on.
Roll EMS into our fire department. This is called Fire-based EMS.
Make a new standalone City EMS department.
There’s a long conversation about collective bargaining and labor rights, and whether a City-based EMS could be granted some form of negotiating power.
A majority of council votes for Option 3, but they ask city staff to look into the laws around collective bargaining and EMS.
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Let’s talk about union-busting for a sec.
Forming a union is a big hassle, and so my guess is that the grievances with management were significant. (I don’t have any details, though.)
Pre-union-busting, how much did EMS cost everyone? Here’s what I found from 2022:
ESD #1: $3.3 million in taxes (here) ESD #9: $3.84 million in taxes (here) San Marcos: $4.22 million in taxes (here)
Total: $11.36 million of taxpayer money to SMHC-EMS.
Post-union-busting, we now have three separate departments. Here’s what tax-payers are paying in 2026:
ESD #1: $8 million in taxes (here) ESD #9: $10.2 million in taxes (here) San Marcos: I can’t locate this for the life of me. Let’s ballpark $9 million in taxes, for our City EMS, based on the consultant study from January.
Total: $27.2 million of taxpayer money, to three separate EMS departments.
Bottom line: Way to go, asshats. You’re spending $16 million extra of taxpayer dollars, but at least you’re screwing over the people who keep us alive in an emergency.
…
Which brings us to tonight!
The point of the workshop is to update Council on how it’s going, planning for a new City EMS department.
The staff presentation
First off: city staff say there is absolutely no way to give EMS collective bargaining power under state law.
Police and Fire Departments can unionize, which is known as “Civil Service”.
But EMS doesn’t qualify as Civil Service, because San Marcos is too small:
You have to have 460K people or more. So Austin can do this, but not us.
…
The first step is to hire an EMS Chief:
After this, we’d start hiring everyone else. Current SMHC-EMS workers would have first dibs on applying, and then we’d open it up to anyone else.
There’s a whole lot of medical mumbo-jumbo about credentialing, medical directors, clinical operating guidelines, physician consultations, etc, which I honestly do not have the background to follow.
…
What do people say at Citizen Comment?
Five people speak:
Former SMPD commander: This is great! City EMS services are the way to go. State of Texas has bad laws around civil service, but the EMS workers are okay letting collective bargaining go.
Citizen rep on Hays County EMS Board: Same!
Two longterm field workers: This is the best of a bad situation. City EMS is the way to go.
Zach Philips, president of the EMS union: you don’t need to rush this process. Our contract runs until 2028. Why not finish the contract and carefully plan your new City EMS to start in 2028?
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What does Council say?
Alyssa: How did you build the job description for the EMS Chief? What’s the timeline? Answer: We looked at other city EMS chiefs, and based it on those. We want someone who can build an EMS department from scratch, and also build lots of partnerships. Maybe down the road, we can do mobile community healthcare or something. The hiring process will probably take two months, but it’s flexible.
Amanda: Austin uses a process called “Consultation” instead of collective bargaining. Can we do that? Answer: Austin has a special bracketed carve out in state law. We may be able to do something called “Voluntary Consultation”.
While the law explicitly prohibits collective bargaining, many school districts have adopted consultation policies allowing school boards to meet and confer with educators about educational policy and employment conditions. These consulting agreements are related to the concept of collective bargaining but constructed in such a way that the input given is considered advisory rather than legally binding, and therefore does not qualify as a collective bargaining agreement by law. The school districts are not required to act on the input received from the employees and final decisions on matters discussed through the consultation process are decided by school board members.
So it’s not binding, and it would be voluntary by the city. At best, it’s a good-faith effort to foster communication. At worst, it’s thoughts-and-prayers.
City Manager Reyes: this means that certain city employees would get a perk not offered to the rest of city employees. Something to consider.
(Note: We could offer Voluntary Consultation to everyone. Just saying.)
…
Amanda: Is it viable to keep the current contract in place to 2028?
No one really answers this, but this is the central question. Should we build an EMS department from scratch in 5 months? Or should we see whether it works to just keep our contract with SMHC-EMS?
There’s this chart:
Sorry about the screenshot. I know it’s tiny and hard to read. (It wasn’t in the packet, because it was only requested the day before.)
I think this chart is supposed to show that it saves more money to build our own EMS department by October. But it really doesn’t.
Lorenzo makes an excellent point: this chart supposedly compares City EMS and SMHC-EMS. Some of the numbers should be identical either way – for example, the amount of revenue from ambulance rides should be the same. But they’re not – they’re off by $1.3 million. (This is the first row of the chart, comparing the 1st entry and the 4th entry.)
In several places, numbers that should match don’t actually match. This is probably because nobody actually knows the real estimates, and they used different sources to get projections in the different columns.
Point being: no one can really say which will be cheaper, the current contract or a City EMS.
Amanda: This is not solely about revenue. I’m focused on the quality of care and taking care of our community, not taking the cheapest option.
But Lorenzo wasn’t arguing that we should go for the cheapest option. He was arguing that we haven’t really thought through just staying with the current contract. It is a viable option, but we’re acting like it’s off the table.
My read is that staff came in with a lot of momentum towards building a new EMS department. There just isn’t a lot of oxygen in the room to discuss continuing the current contract.
…
Josh: I value people and communication more than I value the nitty-gritty details!
Josh is both right and wrong. He’s correct that when people with power operate in good faith, and value their employees and value communication, you have the best possible scenario. But he’s also wrong: when people with power stop operating in good faith, the only leverage that employees have are the details that are spelled out. When things go sideways, the devil is in the details.
I think Josh believes “Look, I have good intentions and I like being a good boss. That’s enough to make sure we’re in the good scenario!”
…
So what’s the timeline?
If everything was put in motion today, it would take 6 months for the state license to come through. Then we’d coordinate with Medicare, Medicaid, DEA, etc etc.
Matthew: Where would we put city EMS? Answer: We’d talk to their landlord and try to rent out their current building.
Hopefully everything would be ready to go on October 1st, but otherwise we’d have a contingency plan, which we also would build out.
Jane: How long did ESD 1 and ESD 9 take to create their own plan? Answer: ESD 1 took 6-8 months, ESD 9 was a bit longer.
Jane: can we compare benefits plans? Answer: We’re working on it.
Note: It’s not just benefits. At the January meeting, they also mentioned looking to make sure seniority transfers over. Otherwise you are going to lose your most experienced EMS workers.
Alyssa: This is big and complicated, and there are so many ways for it to go disastrously wrong if we rush it.
Fire Chief Les Stevens: The Medical Practitioner oversees these transitions and would not allow care to lapse for one second.
Amanda: In the next legislative session, maybe we can lobby for fixing the Civil Service rules?
….
Ok Council:
1. Who wants to stick with City based EMS?
Yes: Matthew, Shane, Jane, Josh, Amanda No: Lorenzo and Alyssa
Alyssa says that she is just not yet satisfied with the open questions about labor protections.
2. Who wants to look into Voluntary Consultation as a lite-collective-bargaining?
Yes: everyone. No: no one.
So there you have it.
…
At the very end, the union rep Zach Phillips weighs in again:
I still have concerns about the timeline and labor protections
EMS will absolutely not generate revenue. Do not look at this as a revenue source, I promise.
Yes on lobbying the state legislature. We think we can make progress on this by 2028, which is one reason to wait.
You all will be the 2nd largest city based EMS, after Austin. What’s the rush?
Alyssa: Will we put a union rep on the hiring committee for the EMS chief? Answer: Absolutely. Yes.
…
Final notes: How are we going to pay for this? We’re already looking at a $4 million budget hole. As Zach said, this will not generate revenue.
My guess is that that will be a big, messy conversation, and so there just wasn’t time to roll that conversation into the this workshop.
What a mess! Sure do wish we hadn’t done this last year:
Aaaand we’re back! Spring break is over and we’ve got a $4 million budget hole looming for 2027. Also we’re going to start charging out-of-towners to swim at Rio Vista this summer. Enjoy?
Let’s dive in!
Hours 0:00 – 3:05: the North campus area plan, some 2027 Budget planning, paid parking at the Lion’s Club and admission fees at Rio Vista, plus some little items
They shuffled the Council calendar in March to avoid Spring Break. This means we’ve got another Council meeting this Tuesday, instead of taking a week off. See you all next week.
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.
….
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:
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.
…
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.
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.
…
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.
….
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.
…
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.
…
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.
Hello everyone! Ahead of time, it sounded like Council might have a big fight night, but it ended up being pretty mellow. We didn’t kill citizen comment nor give data centers a fast track. Read all about how it all fizzled out!
Jump in:
Hours 0:00 – 4:32: The biggies: the land development code and the citizen comment thing. Also city-run childcare and CDBG grants.
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: Covid money has to be spent by December. We’re going to spend every last cent that we can.
Note: the next meeting isn’t until March 31st. They rearranged the calendar to avoid Spring Break. Try not to miss me too much!
It’s very hard to speak concisely when you’re new to citizen comment
Emailing council is no substitute for citizen comment, because other people don’t get to read the emails, and council can ignore emails. This is how the public informs each other.
The nationwide average is 3 minutes per speaker.
Main points on Topic 2:
Are we making it easier for Data Centers by allowing them in the Business Park zoning?
Are we making it easier for Data Centers by giving the permitting decision to P&Z?
Why aren’t we proposing regulations on their water use, air quality and waste water quality, power usage, and other things like that?
We will get to this! Sit tight.
Finally, that last 41st speaker, on his own topic: Clearly last meeting, everyone said they love the river. Can we monetize the river? There aren’t any billion-dollar industries besides data centers. How are we going to bring businesses to this town?
…
One last comment that’s worth noting:
At the 3 pm meeting, Max Baker asked: Hey, the executive session was all about “Confidential Utility Competitive Matters” with the Lower Colorado River Authority. Is this a data center thing?
City Lawyer: Legally we cannot say, but no, this was not a data center thing.
Good to know!
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Item 7: Youth Standards of Care
This is a yearly item. San Marcos runs a bunch of affordable camps for kids. The big one is Summer Fun, which is $40 for the entire week, including meals. This is really a lifesaver for lots of families. There’s also a discovery camp, and a spring break camp, and other helpful camps.
City run camps are exempt from state licensing the way other childcare centers are licensed. Instead, they have to pass a Standards of Care. So this is that.
SiEnergy is a natural gas company. They are not in San Marcos. They’re in Houston, Dallas-FortWorth, and Austin.
If they want to come to San Marcos, they have to get a franchise agreement with the city. Then they’d have to pay the city a surcharge once they’re operating.
The franchise agreements last five years. They’ve had one for the past five years, which they got one back in 2021. They’ve just been sitting on it. Now it’s 2026, and they want another one, for another five years.
Everyone says fine.
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Item 9: CDBG Money
CDBG stands for “Community Development Block Grants”. This is money from the federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) department. San Marcos gets about $740K every year.
Applications from nonprofits were due last week. City staff are about to wade through them. So tonight is to find out if there’s anything specific that Council wants staff to think about while reading applications.
Max Baker speaks up during the public hearing: Hey, the Civics Club has been working on the Tenants Bill of Rights. Can we steer some funding towards those efforts?
The Tenants Bill of Rights dovetails nicely because it can keep housing decent. They say they’ll look into this.
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Item 10: The LDC
This is the first hot potato of the night!
Background
“LDC” stands for Land Development Code. The Land Development Code is where all the planning and zoning rules are spelled out in excruciating detail.
Because it’s so weedy, it requires lots of revisions. If a law gets changed, you have to change the LDC. If you change one thing, you have to change 20 other details that are all connected. People find typos or extraneous details that didn’t need to be there. New situations arise and we need new rules to deal with them. Council has new ideas about how to do things better. Etc.
The planning department takes notes, and stockpiles all of these changes for two years. Then they take the pile out and implement all the changes, all at once. This is that.
There are 320 proposed changes. They range from boring and insignificant to exciting and controversial.
What does the public say?
Everyone’s worried that this is a stealth maneuver for data centers. (Thirteen speakers.)
What does staff say?
Data Centers: Let’s start here. The staff proposal is terrible and I promise that it is not going to happen. Multiple council members said they had amendments to fix this. They know everyone hates it.
So what was it? The proposal was to require a permit for the Business Park zone and the Light Industrial zone, and automatically allow data centers in Heavy industrial.
My $0.02: Is there any way to put standards on water and electric use, as part of the permit process?
…
Here are a bunch more of the LDC changes, mentioned in the staff presentation:
Revising the Valid Petition rules for protesting a rezoning, to match the new state law.
My personal favorite: the state struck down Occupancy Restrictions.
Occupancy Restrictions are the city rules that say things like “No more than two unrelated people may live in the same house”. It’s micromanaging what people do in their own homes, and it’s very classist. It’s never enforced unless you’re hunting around for a reason to harass someone.
We’ve had big fights about it here and here and here. We loosened it from two unrelated people to three unrelated people. And now it’s gone! Haha. Good riddance.
Mellow out on when a historical property needs a Certificate of Appropriateness
Modifies when a Qualified Watershed Protection Plan is required:
Tinkering with lot widths and irregular shaped lots
Weird caps on parkland dedication:
I’m not clear on how generous this is.
Zero lot line houses and cottage courts in CD-3 (this is good!)
Including microbreweries into the possible land uses
Add “sensitive features protection zones” around Environmental Protection Zones
Allow street parking to count towards parking requirements downtown. This is good for walkability and density.
Require bike parking racks to be provided with parking lots. (This is good!)
Add pollinator plants to what can be planted downtown. (yay for butterflies!)
Instead of the city putting up signs about public hearings, the applicant is responsible for putting up signs. The city has to supervise, so I don’t know if this helps much, though.
We used to have something called PDDs, where the city could micromanage what a developer built, and developers could get all kinds of breaks. Then we got rid of them. Now we’re bringing a lite version back: you can put constraints on developers, but no freebies. Note: Maybe this is a good place to put water and power use considerations?
Formalizing what we mean by amplified sound and background sound, so that P&Z can put restrictions on downtown bars.
Add in Demolition Delays to one of the tables
Eliminate number of rooms from hotel categories.
Tree surveys required any time someone wants to develop around a heritage or protected tree
Require downtown businesses to clean 100 feet out from their exits instead of just 50 feet.
It’s a lot.
I didn’t go through the other 250 changes to verify that they were all minor. There’s always a judgement call on whether something is a big deal or not.
What does Council say?
It takes about 2 seconds for Amanda to motion to postpone. This is such a gigantic topic that no one has properly vetted all 300+ changes.
Note: The data center thing will definitely be changed. Several council members said this. But feel free to weigh in with your preference!
The SMART/Axis terminal never really had an epic meeting, because it was withdrawn before the rezoning came for a vote. But there was six months of people showing up to comment.
So this is not a new thing. (But I went and looked up some old controverseys – Cape’s Dam, and the Sessom Creek apartments, and the Woods Apartments, and the HEB on Wonderworld – all of these citizen comment periods were at most an hour. So things are getting longer.)
Which brings us to today
So the last meeting was a doozy. This meeting, Jane proposes that we should cut people off after 1 minute.
DUDE JANE. What the hell? This idea monumentally dumb in so many ways:
Don’t restrict people’s participation. Citizen Comment is heavily utilized because it holds so much value.
The timing is tone-deaf – are you trying to come off like you’re retaliating?
If you don’t like going until 3 am, then focus on that. Your policy should address your problem. Right now, it sounds like you think the problem is people having three minutes to talk.
Jane speaks first! Here’s her argument:
She’s not trying to remove Citizen Comment altogether!
She’s willing to go to 2 minutes, to avoid the Austin lawsuit.
You can say if you’re a Yes or a No on an item in 1 minute.
If you have more to say, send an email. (Preferably before 5 pm the Friday before the meeting.)
Right now, the 100th speaker speaks at 11 pm. This way, the 100th speaker would speak at 8 pm. This is good for the public citizens who want to speak!
Alyssa claps back hard: Absolutely not. Give our neighbors every opportunity to speak. Organizing is hard and stressful and we’re not going to create more obstacles.
But Alyssa does also admit: it’s true that none of us are at our best at 1:00 am.
Amanda goes next: Hard no on reducing citizen comment time. But there is a problem with these ultra long meetings. Why don’t we brainstorm creative solutions for that?
Lorenzo: – I’m open to brainstorming other creative solutions. – I’m open to reducing citizen comment. – And also, have you all heard yourselves ramble? Maybe some limits on council monologues?
Oh Lorenzo. You drag things out during council meetings!
But Lorenzo also brings good ideas to council discussions! He notices details and is good at brainstorming creative solutions. But he’s not quick about it. He sometimes gets hung up on tiny details and goes down rabbit holes trying to hash them out.
Josh: When people aren’t sure what they’re walking into, it sparks fears and leads to citizen comments that drag on. If we’re more prepared, it leads to more clarity and better-run meetings.
…
Bottom line: they’re going to have a future council discussion on how to shorten meetings.
My $0.02: you’re going to have to meet more often. Clearly San Marcos has outgrown two meetings per month.
Either:
Cut meetings off at 11 pm and come back on Wednesday?
Meet weekly occatsionally?
Special sessions for hot topics?
I personally do not like the last option, because my schedule for cranking out these posts hangs by a thread sometimes. But I guess the world doesn’t revolve around me. Sadly.
The San Marxist 