I did also listen to the 3 pm workshop, mostly on Capital Improvement Projects, or CIP projects.
There are a group of five houses or so on San Antonio street, right where Bishop meets San Antonio, and they all flood regularly. This has been going on for years and years. Several people spoke and asked if their project could be accelerated.
The answer was “no, not really.” Basically the CIP list gives the wrong impression on timelines. It only tracks how much money will be dedicated to each project in each year. But that is not the actual timeline of the project, because the design phase doesn’t need a big allotment of money. What that means is that the project is already in progress, even though it doesn’t look like it has started yet according to CIP funding. When it’s time to spend money, the money will appear as scheduled. However, the projects can’t be sped up, because they’re already in motion and each step holds up the next step.
To me, this means something deeper: City Council and P&Z are being asked to put their input into a document that has very little flexibility. Therefore their input is coming at the wrong stage. If the city staff were systematically biased in favor of certain parts of the city, that would not be visible from the CIP list, because we have no way of knowing which projects aren’t ever rising into the conversation about potential future projects.
The answer has to be something about a supervised process to determine which projects are rising to attention in the first place, with attention to making it equitable. That’s the part that needs public scrutiny.
Ugh. Listen: Gabrielle Moore lost by 15 votes, in the school board election last night. Just 15 votes. And the opponent is a disengaged random walk-on who has never voted in a school board election in something like 20 years, but conservative voters went for him. And Gaby would have been great.
It is a pretty brutal slog to run for office. I personally loathe small talk and glad-handing, and can’t imagine anything worse than having to convince people to vote for me. But I’m so grateful that people do run for office. And then to come so excruciatingly close! It sucks and I’m sorry.
In which we relish the sentence, “Nothing would give me more pleasure than to sue him.”
All of these are actually pretty short.
A few other notes
Apparently Half-Price books is leaving San Marcos, and I’m super bummed about it. They posted a letter saying they were priced out of rent, and unable to find anything else affordable.
We have a glut of empty store fronts, and yet the vacant store fronts are priced unaffordably for local businesses, and landlords are raising rent on existing buildings and forcing tenants out. Couldn’t GSMP do something here? I generally don’t see eye-to-eye with the business community, but this is their wheelhouse. Could they shake some sense into commercial real estate landlords and get them to stop sabotaging San Marcos? In other words, set rates that are appropriate for San Marcos retail, not Austin retail. I already miss Half-Price Books.
Lastly:
I’m halfway through the city council workshop from Tuesday afternoon, and finding it fascinating. There was an excellent presentation on homelessness in San Marcos, and on an ordinance to hold landlords accountable for unsafe or subpar rental properties. Both are extremely complicated topics.
Item 1: The Sidewalk Maintenance and Gap Infill Program:
If you don’t know Lisa Marie Coppoletta – or LMC – then you are missing out on one of the more memorable of town personalities. She speaks up at far more City Council meetings than anyone else in town. She ran for mayor a few years ago. She tends towards libertarian beliefs – lower taxes, individualism – and so she can veer into ideas that I am vehemently opposed to. But she also picks a few key issues that are personal to her, and focuses like a laser beam on them. What I am saying is that she is the most ever-loving persistent person you’ve ever met. And this item is her shining moment in the sun.
Apparently San Marcos had a survey back in 2011, and road and sidewalk maintenance faired dismally:
Whoops. So we decided to become more walkable. So we needed sidewalks. In 2013, we started the Sidewalk Maintenance & Gap Infill program. They’ve got a teeny budget – 150K-200K per year. They survey the town, look at where we’re not wheelchair-accessible, or where parks aren’t connected to neighborhoods, etc, and generally chip away at the streets of San Marcos.
At some point in the last 5-6 years, Belvin got sidewalks. LMC lives on Belvin, and something happened with the sidewalks and LMC’s trees in her front yard. (I literally do not want to fully understand this issue.) Since then, this has been her number one talking point, and this presentation is the pinnacle of her time and effort spent wearing everyone down on the topic.
But she is successful, and I don’t mean that dismissively! There are four proposed changes to the Sidewalk program, and one is: “Develop protocol for tree inspection and analysis prior to construction, inspection during construction, and follow-up.” This is a good idea. Local activism at work!
Then the question arises: Who gets to vet upcoming sidewalks? Should they go to neighborhood commissions? Historical Preservation Committee? City Council?
Alyssa Garza asks how well the citizen input has been going. Answer: lately it’s been pretty poor. They’ve tried to reach out, and people just don’t show up.
All the councilmembers agree: Sidewalks should go to neighborhood commisions, HPC, and yes, to city council.
Here is my question: Suppose staff is planning a sidewalk project, and brings it to the neighborhood commission. And suppose the neighborhood says no, we don’t want sidewalks. Does it still come to council? Can Council override a neighborhood vote? Would it require a supermajority?
Here is my problem – I’m cynical about neighborhood associations. I’m worried that individuals will focus on the twenty yards of sidewalk along their property, and will only be mad about that. I can imagine a neighborhood full of people who are mildly enthusiastic about sidewalks in general, but passionately mad about the portion in front of their own house.
This could easily be the death knell of the sidewalk program altogether, which is then a huge collective loss.
People are averse to change, and they will overestimate how much it will sting to lose their street easement. But once it’s built, it’s not going to be a thorn in their side. Don’t let their fears wreck what’s best for the whole.
CIP projects are Capital Improvement Programs. This is basically public works – which major water/wastewater/electric/roads/facilities projects are coming down the pipeline in the next year? What about the next three or next ten years? It’s big and complicated. We’re looking at roughly $10 million of projects this coming year.
(There are so many projects that I’m not prepared to do a super deep dive, but if you want to know when a project on your street will be completed, this is where you look. For example, Hopkins will be reopened in 2050.)(Kidding. But really, just email the city and ask about whatever project you care about.)
Then there are a bunch of annexation and zoning cases.
Here’s the first:
That’s I-35 and Posey, right near Trace. They are asking for Heavy Commercial. Think retail and businesses, but they’re allowed to be car shops or other industrial-ish things, like you’d see along I-35.
Max Baker takes issue with how these are such fossil fuel heavy uses. Mark Gleason offers up a proposal: “No waste-related services.” (This is animal waste processing, landfill, composting, recycling, solid and liquid waste, incineration, etc.)
Vote on allowing waste-related services? No: Mark Gleason, Max Baker, Alyssa Garza It’s fine: Jude Prather, Shane Scott, Jane, Saul.
So it’s fine.
Next Max proposes nixing truck stops. Vote on allowing truck stops? No truck stops: Max Baker, Alyssa Garza They’re fine: Jude Prather, Shane Scott, Jane Hughson, Saul Gonzalez, Mark Gleason.
So they’re fine.
Next, this chunk of land:
Which fits like a tetris piece alongside the last one.
This is going to be heavy industrial. This means basically anything goes – manufacturing, warehouses, etc.
The vote: Yes: All of them except Max Baker. No: Max Baker
Here’s the last one:
That is 123 running north-south, on the right hand side of the photo. In other words, if you’re driving out of town on 123, you’ll get to the overpass over Wonderworld, and you’d be at the top of the photo.
If you keep driving south, the site will be on your right, but set back a little ways, and before you get to the intersection with McCarty.
The owners want to do Light Industrial on part of it and leave the rest vacant. Max Baker proposes an amendment to nix waste-related services.
Vote to allow waste-related services? No: Max Baker, Mark Gleason, Alyssa Garza, Saul Gonzalez, Jane Hughson Keep them! Jude Prather, Shane Scott.
1. Council cleans up some ordinances on committees. Most of them are very pro forma – formalizing how many members on different committees are from different groups of people, for example. Or deciding if the City Council rep should be a voting member, or not, on a committee. (It depends on the committee, and whether items are then headed to Council or not.)
The one that gets a little extra time is Economic Development San Marcos, or EDSM. Apparently this is a giant group, with like 13 members. Currently, the City Council representative, the City Manager, and the Greater San Marcos Partnership (GSMP) representative are all non-voting members.
Commissioner Baker points out that the Chamber of Commerce representative, the Hays County Commissioner, and the School District Representative should also be non-voting members. Secondly, while the GSMP rep is a nonvoting member, there are a bunch of other voting members who have close ties to GSMP.
EDSM gets pulled, and it gets kicked to the Finance and Audit committee, which Commissioner Garza and Mayor Hughson are on.
2. The City of San Marcos Economic Development Policy
Like all cities, we give away tax breaks to lure businesses here. I’m generally extremely skeptical that tax breaks attract enough businesses to make it worthwhile. And it’s easy to find lots of sources that agree with me.
The sense I’m getting from those papers is that poor communities pay a lot per job in incentives, the and while the jobs generally do materialize, it doesn’t tend to spill over into creating any bigger robust economy.
It sounds like generally, businesses narrow down their top three locations, and then the towns get into a bidding war with each other. So the local governments are pitted against each other. A city could only opt out if all the cities agreed to opt out. (Why is everything always a collective action problem?!)
Anyway, today’s particular policy updates actually do sound good. Companies that get incentives should have to use local resources for job postings. They should have to pay the average of Hays County as a wage, which is $22/hour. They should have to meet some sustainability criteria. Etc. So while I’m grumpy about tax breaks, these sound like improvements.
Last meeting, a dozen people were extremely frustrated with Texas Aviation Partners. I don’t think this is related to that. This is just some other guy, Shaune Maycock, who owns Blue Skies Aviation, and is out of compliance with a bunch of stuff. So San Marcos needs to hire an attorney, and Charles Soechting is up for the job.
But Maycock submitted stacks and stacks of papers right before the meeting. Max Baker finds and reads a line from a 2014 email, written by Charles Soechting: “As you know, I have no positive feelings about Shaune Maycock. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to sue him.”
God, what a delicious line that is. You have to savor that kind of bitterness. Max Baker questions whether or not Soechting can be appropriately amicable and professional, given this enjoyable display of seething.
(This is right at the 4:00 mark, btw).
However, Soechting gets to talk, a few minutes later. And he finishes the paragraph that Max quoted. Immediately after Nothing would give me more pleasure than to sue him, Schoechting wrote “However, I have to have evidence. As you know, I’ve been to the repair shop and talked about how we were having difficulty with [some background on repairing planes, and stuff about how Maycock has cancelled a lot of appointments and been frustrating]… However, remember, what I said about evidence. We have to have evidence, and anger is not evidence. Being mad at someone is not evidence. The last thing I want to do is to see Shaune get off like he did with [a prior case].”
Do you remember the very old mid-90s scene from the Simpsons, where Lisa finds the alien’s book with the title, “How to Cook Humans”? And then the alien blows off some space dust, and the title is really “How to Cook For Humans”? And then Lisa blows off more space dust, and the title is now revealed to be “How to Cook Forty Humans”? And then the alien blows off even more space dust, and the title finally ends up being “How to Cook For Forty Humans”? It turned out that the aliens were good, and Lisa blew it by being overly suspicious of them.
I’m just saying, maybe Max could have blown off a little more space dust before reading that quote. The very next line provides some useful context, making the lawyer sound like someone who behaves ethically even when he can’t wait to sue someone.
Update as of 8/6/22: Shaune Maycock reached out to me, and he disputes the impression given by Schoecting in the quote above, particularly the part about cancelling appointments.
Early voting starts Monday and runs through May 3rd. Election day is Saturday, May 7th. All the stuff about where and when to vote can be found at her site: https://www.votegabriellemoore.com/
The intersection out in front of the Methodist Church, back behind to Little HEB. It’s dangerous and needs a four way stop sign. Several people spoke about this. They are probably right!
Many people spoke against the warehouse in Victory Gardens. Strongly opposed.
A lot of people spoke against the Texas Aviation Partners. I gather that they run the airport, having gotten a contract from the city in 2012. They sound like total shitheads? Everyone basically described them as inept at best, and vindictive and corrupt at worst.
The Victory Gardens warehouse is the only item on the agenda, though, in Hour 2.
Item 1: Upcoming Community Survey
Council wants to know what’s important to us all. Right now they’re fine-tuning the questions that the survey-people will add in, specific to San Marcos. Like: Why do San Martians go to New Braunfels and spend our money there? Are we doing enough to protect the aquifer? Do San Martians realize how much money we drop on the Greater San Marcos Partnership and do we feel it’s worth it?
(That last one is courtesy of Max Baker, who loathes GSMP. While I agree GSMP is mostly a bag of hot air, I can’t imagine that a survey question will reveal much.)
And lastly: should the survey go out in the summer, and exclude the college students, or should it wait till fall, and include the college students?
The main argument put forward (by Councilmember Garza) was that outreach efforts will be hindered if the public schools are closed. Max Baker agreed with this. (I am still mildly curious if they actively prefer having college students participate in the survey or not.)
Shane Scott straight-forwardly says that it will be biased without college students, and so we should include them.
The vote:
Exclude them: Saul Gonzalez, Max Gleason
Include them: Alyssa Garza, Max Baker, Shane Scott, Jude Prather
Mayor Hughson avoided sharing her opinion. After Jude voted, she just said, “So that’s four for September” and left it at that.
It is worth thoroughly understanding this. Here’s the lot in question:
It’s the building split into four quarters, with the red pin dropped in it.
If you’re not very familiar with Victory Gardens: Top right is Black’s BBQ, on Hull street. On the left, Patton street crosses the railroad tracks. If you’ve squiggled through Victory Gardens to avoid a stopped train on Guadalupe or LBJ, you probably ended up crossing the tracks there. The Historic District starts on the other side, after a little more squiggling.
It sure looks to me like the only way in or out of that warehouse is onto Camacho, smack in the middle of that triangle, which is a heavily-used playground. That is Victory Gardens Park, which is probably the pedestrian-heavy heart of Victory Gardens, right next to the church. Camacho is narrow and already gets too much traffic, especially when cars are trying to escape the stopped trains.
This is a terrible place for a warehouse, mostly because of trucks on that tiny road, with kids and pets roaming around. The neighborhood is right to oppose it.
The neighborhood showed up in strong numbers to voice their opposition. Usually if a neighborhood mobilizes like this, P&Z and Council will side with them. (And P&Z did – they voted to deny, 9-0.)
Here’s the problem: the lot is already zoned Heavy Industrial. That means that the owner can do a lot of pretty gross things, without having to get permission from the city or anyone. Picture manufacturing or waste products, etc. (The city can’t just change the zoning without the owner’s approval.)
It’s been abandoned for a long time, and the owners claim it’s a hazard and eyesore.
If this passes, council can tack on riders about finding an alternate entrance, regulating what goes on there, and so on. If council does not pass this, then the owner can do whatever the hell he wants. The only reason the owner is here is because he wants to enlarge one of the buildings more than 25%, and he wants an exemption from one part of the code.
What’s the right answer? The “right” answer is that the owner needs to launch a charm offensive and win over the neighborhood. Then council can approve the Alternate Compliance and tack on appropriate conditions.
Is the owner doing that? The night before, the owner flaked out on a community meeting and pissed everyone off, instead. So no. (Carina Boston Piñales has been doing her best as a liaison, but unsuccessfully so far.)
Council voted to postpone, and strongly encouraged the owner to win over the neighborhood in the meantime. Hopefully he will meet and appease the neighbors and start to build a relationship. But if the neighborhood remains unmoved, I’m really not sure how this will unfold.
One final thought – it would be wise for the neighborhood to prepare a list of demands, to tack onto Council’s approval. Close off the Comacho entrance? Nothing with overnight hours or weird smells? No manufacturing or waste? Etc.
Item 2: Revisiting Commissioner Scott’s dumb idea about water rates. If you recall, currently your first 6000 gallons of water are priced at the cheapest rate, and then the price goes up. Shane Scott wanted to extend the cheapest rate to 8000 gallons.
The city put together a first rate presentation of the logic and reasoning of the existing rates.
How much an average customer pays, how much they’d save. (None, because the average customer uses 5,400 gallons per month.)
How 72% of us are under 6000 gallons of water, and 15% of us are over 8000 gallons. So only 13% would even stand to benefit.
How it would de-incentivize conservation.
Lifeline rates are under-utilized. On average, 25% of applicants via Community Action are getting funded.
And so on. (Powerpoint slides here.) Everyone abandoned any thought of Shane Scott’s proposal. We will work with Community Action and find out while the lifeline rates are not reaching the public the way they should.
In the end, that was the end of it. I savored a wee bit of smug satisfaction.
Items 17-22: There are two rezonings that zip through. The first is an extra 76 acres of housing, tacked onto Cottonwood Creek on 123.
I worry a bit about that whole region east of 35 becoming an extreme retail desert. You would not believe the size of the huge tracts of land that have been approved for housing out that way. The vast majority of it seems to be single-family housing. So far, there are no amenities ever discussed – no restaurants, no grocery stores, no daycare centers, no drycleaners, none of the things that make living easier. Maybe I’m short-sighted and the free market will elbow its way in, but it feels very grim to me.
(In general, I don’t understand why Americans are so opposed to having businesses in our neighborhoods. A neighborhood restaurant and laundromat sounds great to me!)
Neither developers, nor P&Z, nor council seem to have any appetite for making new neighborhoods denser. We only seem to approve apartments when they are massive, standalone affairs. Otherwise it’s acres and acres of sprawling single-family homes. When developers are allowed to build duplexes, they don’t seem to want to. Nobody ever attempts to sprinkle 4-plexes and 8-plexes throughout a neighborhood, and it makes me sad.
The other zoning is another patch of La Cima. This is part of the original La Cima agreement, from 2012 or so.
La Cima is a perfect example of the thing that gives me a sad: the original agreement involves both multifamily and single family housing. So they are building a large apartment complex at the front, and then acres and acres of single family homes stretching forever and ever beyond. This authorizes some more of the ever beyond to be turned into single-family homes.
The San Marxist 