Here’s the two big issues this week: Data Centers and Flock license plate reader cameras for SMPD. These kept Council up until 2:30 am, last Tuesday.
Wild. Let’s do this:
Hours 0:00 – 3:28: 2.5 hours of citizen comments! Also a bunch of small topics – street parking permits, sidewalks, CDBG funding.
Hours 3:28 – 6:47: Here’s your two biggies: the Data Center(s) and the Flock license plate readers. This is where all the action is. (Plus a teeny bit on scooters.)
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: The CIP list, and should SMPD officers be allowed to use their vehicles whenever they want?
There’s only one meeting in June, so try not to miss me too much. See you in July!
Last fall, we saw that Riverside Drive killed its street parking. They were sick of people parking in front of their houses and walking over to the river. Now you need a resident permit to park there on weekends.
This pink part of Rio Vista neighborhood wants to join the fun:
They don’t want rivergoers to park on their streets, either.
…
These guys live by one of the Spring Lake trail heads:
They also don’t like hikers parking in front of their houses. They want to require parking permits, too.
…
You know me: I’m a world-class scold on this topic. I did not like it when they did this in Blanco Gardens, I didn’t like it on Riverside, and I don’t like it now. I think this is all bullshit.
It’s a privilege to live walking distance from a major park. You’re very lucky! But the street does not belong to you. People should get to park there.
That said: it is super gross when park visitors leave trash behind in people’s yards! But surely there’s a better solution than quasi-privatization of public streets.
…
Anyway, Council approves both the Rio Vista streets and the Panarama streets:
It’s two different votes, but they both went the same way.
So now only residents get to park on those streets.
…
Item 26-27: CDBG money.
CDBG stands for Community Development Block Grant. This is money from HUD for local projects. This year we have $750K to distribute.
There are some rules:
Council has priorities, and they also had a survey and public outreach to see which categories to focus on.
The committee waded through a bunch of recommendations, and is recommending these amounts:
There’s some explanation that goes with these amounts:
Salvation Army, Southside, and Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid are all getting other funding from the city.
Thorpe Lane just needs a little more funding to add to last year’s funding. They got $650K last year.
Long Street and Cuatehtemoc Hall are just too expensive for this particular fund, and Cuatehtemoc is getting some other city funding.
Calaboose is getting roof repairs instead of a new roof, and the city is paying for that instead.
There is no vote tonight. It is just a discussion item.
The vote is scheduled for the July 1st meeting
P&Z denied the request. So Council needs a 6-1 supermajority to overturn the P&Z vote.
There are 19 more speakers during the public hearing, along with the 35 from from the top of the meeting. (Some people speak twice, though.)
Here’s the main points that people make against the data center:
We’re in a drought, and this will destroy the San Marcos river
We’re in a drought, and this will destroy the San Marcos river
We’re in a drought, and this will destroy the San Marcos river
We’re in a drought, and this will destroy the San Marcos river
We’re in a drought, and this will destroy the San Marcos river
This really is the most important point. Climate change is pushing us towards permanent water shortages, and data centers use a massive amount of water for cooling.
And also:
This will drive up utility rates
There are reports from Granbury that these data centers are unhealthy to live near
Here are the arguments made in favor:
We’re going to get a lot of tax revenue
This does not cost the city much in terms of roads, utilities, and fire/police/emergency services.
These guys are offering to be more environmentally sustainable than the other six data centers. Take the regulated data center over the unregulated one.
Specifically, they’re going to use closed-loop cooling instead of open-loop evaporative cooling. This uses much less water.
Here is the developer’s basic pitch: “Data centers are definitely, 100% coming to central Texas. I’m the friendliest and the most cooperative one. I’m willing to do things environmentally and sustainably.”
He’s offering to put a bunch of concessions into a restrictive covenant. This is a contract that stays intact even if he sells the power plant. The next owner will still have to comply with it.
Here’s what he’s offering:
Closed loop, non-evaporative water cooling system. (This is very important.)
Limiting water use to an amount equivalent to 235 homes
Stricter than San Marcos Code on stormwater detention and impervious cover.
Sound and light mitigation
Getting water from Crystal Clear, not from San Marcos.
Getting electricity from Pedernales, not from San Marcos.
Only need San Marcos for waste water.
Here’s the obvious rebuttal to the last few points:
Who cares if it’s San Marcos city water or Crystal Clear water? It’s all coming from the same water table underground.
One speaker puts it like this: “These are straws pulling on the same water table”. Exactly.
Will this cause the San Marcos River to dry up???
Here’s what the developer said: they’ll need about 400-500K gallons of water to initially fill about 6-7 buildings. But after that, they don’t need much water until the buildings need to be re-filled in maybe 10 years.
100k of water is about what an average family of three uses in Texas a year (~88k). Won’t make the river run dry!
If it was an open loop cooling system (evaporative cooling) and an average system, it would be about 12.5% of San Marcos use. It wouldn’t take many of those to overwhelm local supplies.
So this is a big picture question. Can our river handle this one data center, on a closed loop system? Yes. Can it handle seven data centers on open loop systems? No.
…
So does ANYONE have control over how many data centers come to central Texas?!
This is an uncomfortable question! There’s only flimsy safeguards.
Can San Marcos block them? Only if they’re in city limits, and the developer needs the land to be re-zoned.
1. The overall situation is pretty bad for water use. 2. The San Marcos river has some unique legal protections, because of the Edwards Acquifer Authority. They have legal authority to sue if companies go over their allotted amounts. But still, do we need to test this? 3. We’re relying really heavily on ERCOT to gatekeep this situation.
…
What does Council say?
Everyone’s a little annoyed that the actual restrictive covenant is not already prepared and ready to read. But it’s not.
This is the basic argument that emerges: ERCOT is not going to approve all seven applications. They’ll probably only approve 1-2 applications. So if this data center gets approved by ERCOT, it might prevent an unregulated one from getting approved. That would be a net good.
Jane: It’s better to have these guys, who we can regulate, than the others who we can’t.
Shane: The wastewater from the center goes to the city system. How much extra clean up do we have to do to the wastewater, from the extra chemicals? Answer: We have a filter standard. They have to clean the wastewater up to our standards before they release it to our system.
Lorenzo: Are there going to be gas turbines or some sort of power plant? Answer: No, that’s Cloudburst. We’re not going to have a power plant.
Lorenzo: What happens if they violate the restrictive covenant? Answer: Two things: – Before we issue city permits, we’ll check to make sure they’ve built it the way they’re supposed to. So they can’t get up and running if they don’t build what they say they’ll build. – After it’s built, if they violate the covenant, we can get a court injunction. The court will order them to comply.
The developer is trying to be the most accommodating person ever. Would YOU like to talk to him? He’s got a whole website, and a whole shtick about how he’d like to talk to you.
(Honestly, he’s refreshing after the SMART-Axis Terminal jerks.)
Amanda: I’m concerned that we don’t know what company we’re actually talking about. Answer: I’m not allowed to say who it is yet. I promise I’ll say before the July meeting. They have facilities in Austin, Carrollton, and San Antonio, if you get my drift.
[Gentle reader, I got his drift. This appears to be the only Carrollton data center.]
A lot of citizen comments mentioned how utility and water rates will skyrocket. Alyssa asks about this? Answer: Council sets water rates. They don’t skyrocket unless you want them to.
[Note: This answer is a little disingenuous. Council sets water and electric rates for everyone on San Marcos utilities. So those won’t skyrocket. But if you live down south by all these proposed data centers, you might not be on San Marcos utilities. Who knows what Crystal Clear water and Pedernales Electric will do.]
…
Conversation turns to the P&Z denial. Right now, it takes 6 Council votes to overturn P&Z.
Should Council send this back to P&Z, to take another look? If P&Z changes their mind and approves it, then Council would only need 4 votes to pass this data center.
However, sending it back to P&Z will delay everything by 4-5 months. It might hurt their chances with ERCOT. Council does not want to risk the possibility that ERCOT denies this application, in favor of some other yahoo developer who throws up something worse, out in the county.
Bottom line: I think Council will approve this one data center at the July meeting.
We’re in a kinda terrible situation, but this one data center is probably the least-bad option.
They read all the license plates that go by, and record the date and time. Then if the police are trying to find someone, they can run a search on all that data and see if there’s any record of it.
“LPR” means “License Plate Reader”, and we first got some back in 2017. But we didn’t join the Flock network until 2022, when we bought 14 cameras:
(Also I note that they used seized funds for the first batch. Blech.)
…
Back in February, SMPD wanted to purchase 19 more Flock cameras. Council delayed approval in order to revisit our privacy policy. In March, we revisited our privacy policy and made some good improvements.
So now it’s time to vote on whether or not to approve the grant for these cameras.
What are the arguments for and against?
In favor: There are lots of examples of how Flock Cameras are used to solve crimes. From the packet:
Arguments against : They are tracking your every move. Do you want to live in a police surveillance state? The data gets merged nationwide to have one big nationwide network. Private companies can have Flock cameras. Neighborhoods can have Flock cameras. The ACLU does not like Flock one bit.
But it’s not just an abstract fear about loss of privacy: ICE has access to Flock data. We’ve got a federal administration that plays out revenge fantasies on brown people, and is in the business of deporting people as recklessly and broadly as possible.
Amanda: It’s the times we’re living in. People disappear off the streets because of this technology. – The policies aren’t strong enough to protect against a subpoena. Austin didn’t know until they did an audit that ICE was accessing their data. (Austin is now ending their license plate reader program.) – Senate Bill 9 would require Texas sheriffs to work with ICE. Our data will definitely get shared. Our policies will not protect us. – They’re rolling out new technology, like NOVA. – Please just don’t do this to people.
Saul goes next: I see the pros, but there are not enough safeguards yet. I’m a no.
Council spends the next hour trying to nail down exactly how much control you have over who sees your data. If Dallas PD is looking for a specific red car, can SMPD decide whether or not to release the data on that specific car?
Eventually the answer comes out: no. You do not get to decide on any specific request for data. Once you set up a reciprocal agreement with Dallas, they get access to all your data. Either the faucet is on, or it’s off.
…
The Flock representative keeps repeating “The city of San Marcos owns the data. Flock does not own the data. They’re just the guardians of the data!” Alyssa asks: Can you show me where in the contract that exclusive access is guaranteed to San Marcos? Your policy says that you “retain a perpetual, royalty-free license to use aggregated data for your purposes.” Flock rep answer: We promise that we use it only for anonymized training data.
Lorenzo: Does Flock own the physical servers? Or do you rent servers? What Lorenzo means is: where are the actual, physical computers where the data is stored? Does Flock have their own computer storage?
Answer: We use Amazon Webservices. This means, no, Flock does not own large-scale computer storage. Flock sends the data to Amazon for storage on Amazon computers.
Lorenzo: So Amazon is a third party that could also be subpoenaed for the data? You might not even know if they had to hand it over. What if they violate their agreement and fail to delete it? Answer: It’s in our contract with Amazon that they’d delete the data after 30 days. If they didn’t, they’d have to charge us extra! [Note: that answer does not make any sense. You didn’t misread it.] Lorenzo: Amazon is in the business of data collection. Jane: You’re not in control of that data.
…
Alyssa: This system is dangerous by design. – these claims are absurd! Like “license plates aren’t personal information”. You can track a person with it, can’t you? It’s personal information. – We own the data, but we don’t. They keep it. – They say ICE can’t access our data, but they do. – Anyone that we share our data with can then turn around and share it with whoever they want. – There are many cases of cops using it to stalk people. – Peter Theil is a backer of this, for god’s sake.
Chief Standridge: Look, I can only speak on behalf of what happens locally. In San Marcos, Flock helps solve specific crimes. Locally, I don’t have evidence of any privacy breaches. I am only able to speak to San Marcos.
Amanda: I have never thought that you all are the bad actors. We share with 600 agencies. Our policies don’t matter when we’ve already shared with them. Flock would not be in business without this network.
Jane: I was a software manager at the university. Here’s how it goes: you get a new technology, and you hammer out all the rules with the company. Then they get bought. All the rules with the first company go out the window, and the new company puts all new rules down. If Flock gets bought, all these rules go out the window.
Chief Standridge: What about all the safeguards and policies we discussed in March? Amanda: All we did is require agencies to follow all applicable rules and laws. But there are no federal rules! This technology is not regulated. Your policy ends the moment you share data with them. We share data with Houston! Houston openly says they work with ICE. Therefore we work with ICE.
…
Shane: What about the first 14 cameras we already bought? We still have those, right? Jane: Yes. But we could put it on the agenda to get rid of them. Alyssa: I guess we should revisit this!
Jane shares a little of her thinking: – Originally I thought these cameras were great. And if Flock were only used like in the examples, then it would be fine. – I’ve learned stuff tonight that’s giving me a really hard time saying Flock is good for the US. – Then I thought, “But there’s cameras everywhere. There’s Ring, etc, toll roads, smart phones, etc.” – But that’s different. This goes to government agencies. I’m not worried about our department, but I can’t say that about other departments – Maybe just at major intersections? Nope, nope, that doesn’t work. It’s the other departments. – We just don’t have enough guard rails for this. The more I learn about how the system is being used, it’s pretty scary.
…
Something has happened since the last discussion, because Chief Standridge does not seem surprised that it’s unfolding like this.
He makes one last bid: “What if we only share data within Hays County?”
Alyssa: What keeps Hays County from turning around and sharing it? Amanda: What about the Texas Senate Bill that requires sheriffs to cooperate with ICE?
City Manager Stephanie Reyes weighs in: It’s clear that you all are worried about where we are as a nation. It’s not an issue about SMPD. It’s not about our individuals. It’s about the policy decisions that we can control in the national scene. Everyone’s like: Yes! Correct!
…
Finally, the vote: The motion is to deny. So a green check means no on the cameras, red dash means “yay Flock!”
Are you a NO on the cameras?
Amazing. Shane and Matthew are the only ones who still want them.
The council conversation was outstanding to listen to. It was just so sharp. Everyone made really great points.
It turns out they’re breaking up with us? Their contract is up on June 30th, and they don’t want to renew.
The reasons are:
Low ridership
Tariffs
Finding parts
Ouch.
Once they officially break things off, we’ll start looking for a different company who might enjoy our low ridership, tariffs, and lack of parts.
…
Item 24: More data centers!
So, recall there are seven data centers with applications in at ERCOT.
These are the three that I know about:
So now we’re on the pink one.
Yes, it’s gigantic. The red one from earlier is 200 acres, and this one is 785 acres. They’re saying it would also include housing. Unlike the one in red, the developer wants this one to be on San Marcos water.
It’s past midnight and everyone is exhausted. They decide to just form a council subcommittee to negotiate and discuss the issue further.
Council subcommittee: Jane, Amanda, Lorenzo.
I’m good with that.
…
Item 32: Proposed Charter Amendments for ballot
Here’s the legal language for everything that will show up in the November Ballot:
…
Q&A: Max Baker:
Matthew Mendoza again! Why do you think it’s appropriate to use swear words during the ceasefire conversation?! C, S, and A words?!
Would council consider revisiting EDSM policy and how we award benefits when GSMP knows before Council? Would you bring a discussion item that puts Council knowledge before biz privileges?
CIP stands for Capital Improvement Plan. These are all the big city projects – like, more than $100K – where you have to cover them with a bond and they span multiple years.
There’s basically a fuzzy 10 year plan, a better 5 year plan, a focused 3 year plan, and then an actual budget for the next year.
There are quick easy projects, long difficult projects, and some that are mid:
Loosely speaking, these are the categories for the projects:
Look, here’s some nice photos of projects that have gone great!
woo-hoo!
Here’s some of the bigger upcoming projects:
The hard part is wading through the hundreds of projects, and figuring out what you think about them. That’s what Council has to do.
So what does Council think about them? Not much! They’re eager to get to Workshop #2.
…
Workshop #2: SMPD Vehicles
How do police vehicles work when officers are off-duty? How much wear-and-tear gets put on them? What about when the officer picks up a second job?
Basically, we’ve been letting officers take their vehicles home since 1983:
…
What’s the benefit of letting police officers take their vehicles home?
I found the slides confusing, so I’m just going to summarize Chief Standridge’s arguments:
1. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” We’ve had a drop in crime since Covid, so don’t meddle with things that work.
2. 79 of SMPD employees are on-call sometimes, so it makes sense for them to have a vehicle at home. Otherwise they’d have to re-route to the station, check out a car, and go from there, which is a big delay.
Officers are supposed to keep their radios on, when they’re driving to or from work. He gives a lot of examples of cops that respond to calls nearby, when they happen to be commuting home.
3. Financial considerations:
a. If we tried to park all the vehicles in our lot, we’d run out of parking lot space at the station.
b. If we had cars in use 24 hours a day, we’d have to replace them every 3 years, instead of every 5 years, because they’d wear out more quickly. (This is kind of silly. The force is driving the same number of hours either way. Replace one car after 3 years, or replace two cars every 6 years – you aren’t changing anything.)
c. This slide:
I’ll definitely give the Chief this point. Having vehicles spread out over town is good when the station gets flooded in, which happens semi-frequently.
4. So much time would be wasted checking vehicles in and out. It would take an officer 30 minutes to do a check-out vehicle inspection, and then 30 minutes to do another check-in vehicle inspection at the end! That extra hour would add up to $25,000 in hourly pay per year.
(This one also seemed silly. Maybe check with the Parks Department or Maintenance Department, and see how they manage to make it work.)
5. Officers are a little kinder to the vehicle if they know they’re stuck with it for five years, instead of getting rid of it after each shift.
This one is easy to believe.
…
Chief Standridge never answers the main question: Is this cost-neutral? On the whole, if you compare a take-home fleet vs an on-site fleet, how does the total cost compare?
Here’s what I personally care about: Is this policy similar to the kind of frugality we expect from other departments? Are we keeping SMPD as lean as we keep Parks & Rec, or the library, or maintenance, or anyone else?
We never really got an answer to that, either.
….
Part 2, same workshop: SMPD Vehicles being used when cops have second jobs.
This is what Council cares about more. How much wear-and-tear is getting put on the vehicles when officers go on second jobs? Like SMCISD hires them to work a basketball game, or Amazon hires them to direct traffic? What about the wear and tear on the cars that occurs then?
This is pretty common:
The problem is the jobs that need the cop to keep his vehicle on and idling. For example, you get hired to direct traffic at Amazon. That ages a vehicle, and means that SMPD has to replace the car sooner.
So they’re going to charge officers a little rental fee:
They figured that a rental car company would charge them $163 for 24 hours, so that works out to $6.80 per hour.
Here’s what we’re going to do:
Council is fine with this. They’re going to draw up a formal policy and go from there.
My two cents: Two hours of discussion was way too much for this topic. I lost interest in the finer details of which officer stops for an iced tea on the way to HEB or whatever.
The hot issues are all in the workshops this week: the budget and the river parks. Are we fencing the park off?! Kind of yes! (Also a lot of little items. Long meeting this week.)
Here we go!
Hours 0:00 – 3:25: Citizen comment, the annual survey of the homeless population, and the charter review commission
Hours 3:25 – 4:28: Lots of little items. Downtown funding, an alcohol permit, three SMPD small items, and who is rocking the best council ‘fit?
So much quieter than it’s been. Only seven speakers! Only twenty minutes long!
Here are the topics:
Four speakers: You should have voted for the Gaza ceasefire resolution!
Two speakers: No on the ceasefire! Also we support SMPD and public safety!
One speaker (Rob Roark, of KZSM fame): The Charter Review Commission worked hard and has some good recommendations. Hear them out!
….
Item 1: Homeless population PiT Count
“PiT” stands for Point in Time. Nationwide, everyone picks one day in January where everyone tries to get a physical headcount of how many people are homeless on that one specific day. This is how you get funding from HUD.
We did our PiT count on January 23rd this year. This is the report on it.
….
What counts as unhoused, according to HUD?
What doesn’t?
It’s not a perfect measure!
But it’s not worthless, either.
Here’s how the numbers have shaken out over the past five years:
The blue is a subset of the orange. Those are people who appear to be homeless, but we weren’t able to talk with them.
The vast majority of homeless people of Hays County are in San Marcos:
This is partially because the Hays County Women’s Shelter, Southside Shelter, and emergency hotel housing programs are all located here. But also partially because we’re just a much poorer, more precarious community than the rest of Hays County.
What does Council think?
The speaker makes a plea: can you help us get the county to work on its emergency response plan? For example, during the freeze, their plan was “Send everyone to Southside.”
They decide to send the issue to the Homelessness Committee to think about harder.
…
Item 2: Charter Review Commission
Every four years, we take a fine-tooth comb to the city charter, and look for improvements. Council appointed a commission of residents, back in January. They met weekly all spring, and returned back with a list of recommendations.
Council takes these recommendations, and either rejects them, accepts them, or puts them on the ballot.
Today is just the rough draft. Basically, they’re weeding out anything that they hate. Anything that Council likes will come back in formal, legal language, and then they can argue about the details.
There are 15 total proposed amendments:
Better pronoun use
Notifications on social media
Mayor gets 4 year terms
Tweaking the number of yearly council meetings
Cap on councilmembers zooming in to meetings
Approving council meetings minutes on time
Buying hard copies of city code, grammar tweaks
Auditing anyone who gets public funds
Financial disclosures for referendums and initiatives
More time to file referendum petitions
More time to verify citizen petitions
Change P&Z residency requirement
Review the comprehensive plan a little less often
State budgets using plain, clear language
Tweak some headings
Study single-member districts and launch education and conversation, but don’t take any major action right now.
Warning: This item takes about 2.5 hours to wade through. I’ll do my best to keep it snappy.
Let’s dive in.
Everyone is fine with this.
Everyone like this, too.
This is the first contentious one. This is about election turnout. Presidential elections have the biggest voter turnout. Midterm elections are the next-biggest. The odd years are called off-year elections, and they have the lowest turnouts.
For example, the committee chair read out the mayor vote total for the past four years:
2021: there were 3,800 votes for mayor (off-year)
2022: there were 17,000 for mayor (Midterm election)
2023: there were 3,900 votes (off-year)
2024: there were 23,000 votes (Presidential election)
So the key is those extra 10-20K voters who only show up for big elections: do you think they will vote for your candidate? If so, then you want to align elections to land on presidential years. If not, then you like elections to land on off-years.
The Charter Review Commission is arguing that we should switch to 4 year terms, aligned with Presidential elections. Here are their reasons:
It’s very expensive to run for mayor. Lengthening the term may induce more people to decide it’s worth it.
Two year terms means you’re always campaigning. This may mean you’re overly beholden to your donors.
We should prioritize all voters, not just the well-connected ones.
Often times subcommittees take more than two years to get their work done, so a mayor can’t complete their campaign promises in one term.
What does Council think?
Jane goes first:
She likes 2 year terms. The mayor should have to earn the votes of the people often.
She proposes splitting the difference and going with 3 year terms.
It’s easier to run in odd years because there’s less competition for attention.
It’s cheaper to run in odd years.
The conversation kind of deteriorates. People keep making opposite assertions that directly contradict each other:
Off-year elections are cheap, because there’s less competition!
Off-year elections are expensive, because it’s harder to get donations!
Off-year elections are easier, because it’s quiet so you can get more engagement!
Big years are easier, because you can piggy-back on the extra opportunities and everyone is paying attention!
These things can all be true – it just depends which voters you’re talking about. If you try to get students to turn out, then you like the big years. If you rely on Old San Marcos and personal networks, then off-years are easier.
More contradictions:
People may not want to commit to 2 year terms, because they only get a year before they have to start campaigning!
People may not want to commit to 4 year terms, because they may feel like it’s too long for something they’re not sure about!
Big years are harder, because the ballot gets so long! People don’t want to check all those boxes.
Small years are harder, because people don’t want to make a special trip to go vote!
Everyone’s just making random guesses – no one actually knows how these factors play out.
Alyssa: I strongly prefer 4 year terms. Saul: Two years is better, for accountability. Lorenzo: 2 or 4 year terms. Matthew: 2 or 3 year terms. Shane: 4 years. Amanda: I have issues with all the choices. But I guess 4 years.
This one will go to the people! You get to vote on this, in November! (Which is admittedly an off-year election.)
…
Spontaneous side quest: What about the rest of council? Should there be 4 year terms for all council members?
This is not controversial. Sometimes it’s hard to have two meetings in November, because of elections, and in January, because it means staff has to prepare a meeting over the holidays. We’re allowed to have as many extra meetings as we want. Everyone’s fine with this.
SIGH. This is dumb. This is about former council member Max Baker.
During Covid, everyone else came back in person, and he kept zooming in for an extra year or so. He was also a pretty contentious person who argued a lot, and pissed a lot of people off.
Would he have gotten along better with the rest of council if he’d been in person? Who knows. But many people believe that him zooming in made everything worse. Anyway, the voters did not re-elect Max, so the situation resolved itself.
In my opinion, that’s how it should go. Do something that pisses off a lot of people, and let the voters decide whether or not they approve. Democracy!
This recommendation is not that. It’s about micromanaging who zooms in for which kinds of reasons, but simultaneously pretending not to micromanage these things. “We trust you to give honest reasons, but you’re only allowed to give three bad reasons per year before you get an unspecified consequence.”
Look, these things are all true:
Meetings go better when people are in person
People can have good reasons to zoom in.
People can have bad reasons to zoom in, and you can’t tell the difference
Do not get into the business of policing how conscientious someone is at their job. You’ll end up writing a fractal maze of tedious, detailed rules. Extreme cases make bad policy.
Should this be a charter amendment?
Yes: Matthew Mendoza. No: Shane, Jane, Amanda, Saul, Alyssa, Lorenzo
Should Council discuss this further as an internal, lowkey rule?
Yes: Lorenzo, Amanda, Jane, Saul, Matthew No: Shane, Alyssa
Sure, that’s fine. It’s just weird to micromanage from the charter.
…
Heh. They have not updated City Council minutes since May 2022. Apparently there was some staff turnover, and it fell by the wayside.
This moves forwards.
Everyone is fine with this.
This one is odd. Basically, Council already puts a clause in its contracts that they can request audits like this. In practice, they almost never do.
The question is: do they need extra firm legal footing to do this? Should they put it in the charter, and authorize themselves with extra authority to do this thing we already do?
So it fails. I probably would have voted yes, though.
I liked this one, but the lawyer did say that it’s not really a Charter-level thing. The charter is like your constitution – it’s your high-level principles, but not your detailed little laws.
Yes: Saul, Jane, Matthew No: Alyssa, Shane, Amanda, Lorenzo
So this fails.
Council goes with this one.
Council goes with this one, too.
Keep five year residency: Jane, Saul, Shane, Matthew Shorten to three years: Alyssa, Lorenzo, Amanda
So this fails, and will not go on the ballot.
This just builds in flexibility, since it takes so many years to review a comprehensive plan.
Everyone on Council likes this! City Staff does not like this. The city manager is worried about how you balance formal legal language with plain, understandable language.
Jane Hughson has an example:
“Hotel occupancy taxes, utility revenues, and public private partnerships agreements currently secure self-supporting debt. In the event such amounts are insufficient to pay debt services, the city will be required to assess an ad valorem tax to pay such obligations.”
Can that be stated more clearly?
Probably the best practice is to keep the formal, legal language, but add in clear little summaries from time to time. This moves forward.
This is fine.
…
LAST ONE!
In other words, it’s too rushed to put single-member districts on the ballot. We should study and have community conversations about this, instead.
Do we want to have a conversation about this?
Yes to a conversation: Lorenzo, Amanda, Alyssa, Matthew, Jane No to even a conversation: Shane, Saul
Jane and Amanda are both pretty sure that they’re “No”s on single member districts. But they’re willing to have a conversation.
…
BUT WAIT! THERE’S ONE MORE!
Jane brings up one last issue: The Texas legislature might eliminate all local elections besides November. If something happens to a council member, you could have a vacancy for 10 or 11 months.
Do we want the option to have council appoint an interim, un-elected councilmember?
It sounds like most of council does not want this, but they decide to at least bring it back for a conversation.
“TIRZ” stands for Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone. We have 5 or 6 of these in San Marcos. This item is about the Downtown TIRZ, which covers this area:
This TIRZ started in 2011.
Here’s how a TIRZ works: In 2011, they appraised the value of all that property. Say it was appraised to be $100 million back in 2011. While the TIRZ runs, the city will only get taxes on the $100 million. As the property gets more valuable, the downtown will pay more taxes, but the extra taxes get put back into projects to make the downtown better.
So for example, suppose in 2018, the downtown is now worth $150 million. The city gets the taxes on the first $100 million, and the downtown gets the taxes on the next $50 million.
Here’s a little visual aid explaining this in the council packet:
The downtown TIRZ is actually a joint TIRZ with the county also knocking back some money. Here’s the actual amounts, if you’re curious:
This next bit did not get a lot of discussion:
My best guess is that everyone still wants the TIRZ to wrap up by 2027, and so we’re giving them a final boost to get across the finish line.
Here are the amounts they need to finish up the projects:
Anyway, it does not get much discussion, and passes unanimously:
The city is giving roughly $1 million to the downtown for projects this coming year.
I’m okay with the premise, but I’m uneasy that it didn’t get more discussion, in light of the massive budget cuts we’re incurring elsewhere. If we extended the TIRZ to 2028, could we have spread out $500K somewhere else?
…
Item 22: CUP appeal
There’s this Holiday Inn, on the southbound frontage road, right before WonderWorld:
They have a little bar and grill inside:
The bar and grill serves alcohol. So they have to get a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) from the city.
Here’s how CUPs work: your first year open, you get a 1 year permit. After that, you get a 3 year permit, (There are a lot of extra details, but that’s the gist of it.)
These guys got their 1 year permit back in 2017, and then never came back.
Now: this is a really common, widespread problem in San Marcos, and P&Z and staff have been working to clean it up for awhile now. The city was sloppy about sending reminders, at times, and the businesses were sloppy about not coming in for their permits if no one was checking. So a ton of businesses fell behind.
Here’s the problem: there’s a fee attached to the CUP. (A couple hundred dollars?) The city doesn’t turn a profit, but it covers the cost of staff time and materials.
So the businesses that skip the CUPs for a decade – like these guys – are saving maybe $1000 over the businesses that follow the rules. It’s a little unfair.
P&Z handles this by making businesses pay off their delinquent CUPs. If you skipped 2 renewals, you’re going to get 2 6-month CUP permits. When you’re all caught up, you can go back to having 3-year CUPs.
That’s what happened to these guys. They skipped 2020 and 2023, so when they came in last August, they got their first make-up CUP, lasting 6 months. When they came back in March, they got their second make-up CUP, lasting 6 more months.
But this time they got pissed! So they appealed to Council. They want a full 3 year CUP, and they want a refund of $765.
Here’s the thing:
1. Is the bar right? Absoutely not! This is the standard that P&Z is applying everywhere. This is absolutely fair, and the bar is wrong. But….
2. Is this a good fight for City Council to pick? Hell no! Pick your battles. If someone is making a mountain out of this molehill, have the good sense to step out of their way.
Council steps out of their way and rewards the appeal.
I’m a little annoyed that Council fawns over them for being such good community members. There’s no need to kiss their ass when you’re the one doing them a favor. But Council fawns and preens over them. Whatever.
The vote: Should they get refunded the money that the rest of the business owners have to pay?
Haha. I probably would have voted “yes”, but my heart is with Matthew voting “no”.
…
Item 12: Staffing study for SMPD
Chief Standridge came in 2022. Back then, SMPD did a staffing study, and decided that we needed a lot more police officers:
Then there was a violent crime spike in 2022, and so we freaked out and claimed that we needed a LOT more police, as fast as possible:
I would argue that our crime spike was actually part of a nationwide trend:
(From here.) As covid drifted back in time, crime rates have settled back to baseline in San Marcos, as well.
Council has been spending all its extra money adding extra police and fire fighters. Back then, Alyssa was the only progressive voice on council. But now she’s got company. So do we really need to keep adding police officers?
We’ve decided to do another policing staff study. We are hiring these guys to tell us whether we need more police officers or not.
Is council willing to spend $116K on a new staffing study for the police, from that consulting company?
Amanda: the timeline looks rushed. How are you going to get community input by July 2025? Answer: It’s actually supposed to be five months, not two months.
Alyssa: Why these guys? Answer: They did our Marshal staffing study. We liked them. They didn’t tell us to hire more marshals, but they had good ideas how to move people around.
Saul: This is a lot of money. Can we see the bidding process? Answer: We didn’t have a bidding process, but next time we can do that. Sorry about that.
The vote:
…
Item 4: More SMPD!
Here’s what they want to do:
Should we spend $938K on police station improvements?
Short answer: Yes, because this decision was already made, and now we’re just following through. This is the building and the bullet trap for the shooting range. (We saw the bullet trap earlier here.)
(Did this item get a robust discussion earlier, when it was approved in June 2023? Absolutely not. But what’s done is done.)
Amanda: Will there be any more asks associated with this project? Answer: Possibly to resurface the parking lots. But we don’t expect anything unexpected to turn up when we break ground.
Saul: You do know this is an old graveyard, right? Answer: No, sir, I did not know that. Saul: I’m just kidding.
That was the best moment of the night right there, for sure. I laughed so hard at that.
The vote:
…
Item 10-11: EVEN MORE SMPD!
SMPD is applying for a two grants related to license plate readers. This is supposed to relate to vehicle theft and stealing catalytic converters. Total, these two grants are about $183K. SMPD needs Council’s blessing to apply for the grants.
(This is not the same thing as the license plate scanner saga that we’ve been following here, here, and here.)
Amanda: Didn’t the deadline pass in April? Answer: We got a special exception, because they know that city councils don’t always meet on schedule.
Amanda grills Chief Standridge over the date, and Lorenzo gets snippy over the time wasted. If you enjoy petty council member exchanges, go here and start watching at about 4:08:50.
The vote:
I am 90% sure that Alyssa verbally stated her vote was actually a “no”, but it was hard to hear.
…
Item 24, 25: Tinkering with boards and commissions, and filling vacancies.
There’s a vacancy on P&Z, left by the passing of Jim Garber. Council elects Josh Paselk to be the new commissioner.
…
One last note:
Everyone makes an effort to dress professionally for council meetings:
But is Amanda rocking a maroon three piece suit?!
Is this a councilmember, or is this Andre 3000?? I appreciate good drip, as the kids say.
Just three speakers. Two in favor of fencing off the river and making people enter through managed entry points.
San Marcos River Foundation Director (Virginia Parker): Last weekend, the river was busier than it ever was last year. Water quality is terrible. Lots of glass and styrofoam and trash. Swimmers get stuck under tubes. It’s dangerous. Residents don’t want to go on the summer weekends, but we’re the ones who pay. Monday’s clean up was worse than any clean up last year. In favor of managed access.
Board member of Eyes of the San Marcos River. In favor of managed access. Clean up does not suffice. You must protect the river. Monday morning clean up was astonishing. Piles of glass bottles in water. Cypress trees stuffed full of cans. Trashed tubes everywhere.
One speaker on the AI Data Center:
3. The data center is going to be built, either way! Your choice is this: is the data center going to be in the city – regulated and taxed – or the county – unregulated, untaxed? It’s not bitcoin mining, it’s LEED Certified!
Workshop 1: Fiscal Budget Bad News
Council starts planning the budget in January, and passes the budget at the end of September. Here’s where we are in the process:
So we’re starting to get our tax revenue estimates, but we don’t know for sure how much we’ll get until the end of July.
Ok… this sounds worrisome…
Ruh-roh, Shaggy.
So basically, our budget is has a big gash in it? We can balance the budget with a bandaid, or we can stitch it up and balance the budget responsibly.
One hurts a lot more, but leaves us in better shape longterm. Yikes.
Good lord. It is not a good sign when your city staff is putting melodramatic visuals like this in your slide show.
…
So why is this happening?!
Ok, so property values are falling from their post-Covid peak. This is good in some ways – it’s getting a little more affordable to live here! But it does mean that the city gets less property tax income.
Next, we didn’t build as much this past year, so we’re not adding as many new properties to the tax roll as we have in the past. Also sales tax is down, and inflation is up.
And yet, we keep growing:
Our budget stayed flat while inflation took a bite out of everything:
Amanda: Did all departments hold their budgets flat? Answer: there were some exceptions last year, due to existing contracts, but no exceptions this year. All departments held flat this year.
Mid-year, the city reduced spending by $100K, across all departments.
Alyssa: How did you all reduce $100K? Answer: They looked at the unspent budgets over the past three years, and used that to proportionally allocate the cuts.
These are not one-time cuts – they’re permanent cuts. But departments are allowed to make requests for reinstatements.
So we have less money to spend per resident:
…
Some details on the tax revenue
We get both sales tax and property tax. Let’s take these one at a time:
This chart is a little complicated. Each of those numbers is its own computation. So you see where it says “December 24, -2.3%”? What that means is that they added up the twelve months in all of 2023, and added up all twelve months in 2024, and found that the 2024 year was 2.3% less than the 2023 year.
Some cities are up, some are down:
Here’s who does the most business in town, and hence pays the most sales tax:
And here’s how much different industries have tanked recently:
Dang.
Onto property taxes:
(This isn’t the clearest visual aid, perhaps? I’d probably separate the orange line and the blue bars into two separate graphs.)
Basically, the total property values increased a lot from 2022 to 2023. Then they started slowing down from 2023 to 2024 and 2025. And now, heading into 2026, they’re going backwards.
This is a big bummer.
We’ve built some new stuff, so that helps bring in more revenue:
This is again a wee bit confusing, but let’s take a crack at it:
This is the difference from year-to-year. If it’s positive, then you got more money than last year. If it’s negative, you got less money than last year. You can see that lately, blue has gone negative. Next year, it’s projected that blue is so negative that it outweighs the green.
Lorenzo: Do we have any commercial products on the horizon? City Manager: Yes… you already heard from the AI dude. But there’s a lot more in the pipeline. Buccee’s, IKEA, HEB, multifamily, warehouse buildings. Lots of stuff will get added to the payroll over the next few years.
Ok, let’s shift to tax payers.
We have not raised the tax rate in the past few years. But property values have fallen. If we want to bring in the same amount of money, we would have to charge a little more:
So here, the tax rate jumps by 4%, and the average person pays the same amount in property taxes. This is called the “No New Revenue” rate.
We already made some midyear cutbacks, because we got reports that things were going badly:
Also yearly fee reviews.
Here’s where this leaves us:
Ok, all that shaves us down from $12 million over budget to $1 million over budget. (The blue “$3 million shift” is balancing the budget without being structural about that.)
Also ARPA and other Covid money is going away in 2027. That $1.4 is money the city will have to pick up.
How much does it help to raise taxes?
So each cent increase helps a lot.
…
So now let’s go back to this conversation:
Are we going to take the bandaid on the left, or the painful, responsible path on the right?
Note that in Option 4, everyone’s taxes stay flat. The extra $900K comes from new buildings. It would help offset inflation and implement council priorities.
….
Look, I believe in government. I believe that the role of government is to redistribute wealth and use it to solve collective problems. Starving your government makes inequality worse.
I get that San Marcos has endemic poverty, and people need every possible cent to make ends meet. People resent taxes. But I still believe in them. So I would vote for options 3 or 4.
….
Hang in there! There’s still a whole ‘nother workshop on fencing off the river!
…
What’s not in the budget?
So the departments made $100K in permanent cuts. They’re allowed to request it back, though. These are scrutinized to see if they’re “needs” or “wants”. (Council asks to see a list of all these cuts, as well.)
What else isn’t in the budget?
Remember back in January, when Council dreamed big? We got all excited about things like:
Tenants Bill of Rights and advocacy program
Office of Violence Prevention
Increasing HSAB funding for social programs
None of those are in the budget yet.
….
One last thing: Back in January, we talked about how San Marcos was going to move towards a participatory budget model. The idea is to get the community input, and particularly those people who generally are disenfranchised by government. (In other words, don’t just go and ask all of Mayor Jane’s BFFs what they think about the budget.)
How’s that been going?
Staff did three things:
Consult with the Neighborhood Commission
Have a bunch of Dream Sessions
Have an online survey
Amanda and Alyssa are FURIOUS over this. All of the outreach methods have gotten hijacked by the same old people who always have the ear of Council. This did not connect with the people on the east side.
For example, here’s where the survey responders live:
See that densest cluster in the southwest? That would be Kissing Tree, ie a bunch of wealthy old white retirees. That is not who we mean when we say “get the input of hard-to-reach San Marcos residents”.
In the city’s defense, this is an incredibly difficult problem to solve. What you have to do is form relationships with community leaders in your hard-to-access regions – church leaders, barber shops and hair salons, etc. It is extremely time-intensive.
…
Time for Council direction! Roughly speaking, which road do we want to take?
More specifically, which scenario is Council leaning towards?
This isn’t a final, binding decision. But you don’t want city staff to go in a completely different direction from what Council is willing to approve. You want staff to prepare options that are aligned with what Council is thinking.
Lorenzo has a good question: is that extra $900K enough address the budget requests and council initiatives? Answer: Yes, it’s roughly enough to get us to a stable place, and to implement council priorities:
Tenants Bill of Rights and advocacy program
Office of Violence Prevention
Increasing HSAB funding for social programs
Council direction
Jane: Somewhere between #3 and #4. Lorenzo: #4 Shane: #4 Alyssa: #4, as long as the extra is dedicated to social services, public facing programs, and council priorities. I have to be able to explain this to my neighbors. Matthew: #3 Amanda: between #3 and #4. People must see tangible benefits to their tax dollars. That can only happen through the tenants rights and HSAB funding, ie council initiatives. If it doesn’t include council initiatives, I can’t justify this to my constituents. Saul: #3
The arrests are low, because the marshals can’t take the time to arrest someone.
We saw these sad photos from the river last year, too:
and
It’s very depressing.
Trying to keep up with the crowds is super labor intensive:
Also there are a ton of volunteers, like the The Eyes of the San Marcos River, that show up weekly and pick up the massive amount of litter left behind.
Basically, San Marcos residents have stopped using the river on the weekends. It’s used by tourists from San Antonio, Houston, Austin, and other out-of-towners:
But we don’t collect any tax revenue from them, because they don’t stop at the restaurants or spend the night.
So residents are footing the bill, while the river is over-used by others to the point of destruction.
…
What happened is that there used to be lots of free river parks in Central Texas. But one-by-one, they all got fenced off and started charging admission. This put the pressure on families to travel further and further to get some free recreation and relief from the summer heat.
We’re the last park that is still free. So now we’re getting more people than our river can handle.
This is a collective action problem, specifically a kind called the tragedy of the commons. People have destroyed many, many finite natural resources throughout history. It would be great not to add our river to that list.
I hate this situation so much. I want people to have free recreation to escape the Texas heat! I want families to have fun together! And yet we absolutely have to keep our river healthy and clean.
(The actual solution is that Central Texas needs a lot more free water recreation options available for residents in the summer. The heat is brutal. If we had a functional state government that tried to improve things for their residents, they could solve that problem.)(If my aunt had wheels, she’d be a wagon.)
…
So what are we doing differently this year?
First off, for holiday weekends:
blocking off Cheatham on either end. We started doing this on holiday weekends last year, and it helped keep people safer.
Next: getting the shuttles out of the neighborhoods:
So now the Lion’s Club shuttle takes the I-35 frontage road, instead of going down Riverside.
…
Those are both good, but what about the BIG problems?
After last fall, Council was timidly open to the idea of fencing off the river and charging admission. But they had lots of questions. It was very preliminary.
But then it hasn’t come up since then.
So this was kind of a surprise! The park staff want to try some stuff out this year:
WHOA. That’s this weekend! This is pretty short notice!
The plan:
They want to test out fencing off this one part of the park, by the falls:
You would only be able to get in at those four green entries. You’d have to talk to someone, who reminds you of the rules, like the ban on charcoal grills, and single-use containers, and alcohol.
Maybe we could we keep things from getting less out of hand?
….
I think this is a pretty good idea? I’m surprised that it materialized so fast, but this is a good test run.
…
City staff also floats the idea of charging admission to out-of-towners on weekends? Not residents, just tourists:
Residents would have to register for a pass.
…
Also they want to be able to tow people more easily:
Right now, only Marshals or police can get a vehicle towed. They want to make it easier for the Parking Enforcement Techs to get a vehicle towed, so that the Marshals can keep dealing with the park.
…
What does Council think?
Amanda and Alyssa both: This is all super rushed. This is way too fast. We also have major concerns about staffing – there were some marshals that were overly aggressive and problematic?
City manager Stephanie Reyes: The park marshal that was in the news was fired. But listen: it’s super dangerous there. We’ve gotten very lucky, but please take this seriously.
Jane: All these decisions have to come back, though, with precise definitions.
Parks Director: You can defer the fee. We don’t need to charge people. We just want to have the fence so that we can talk to people before they go in. You can send someone to go put contraband in their car if you catch them on their way in, but once they’ve set up and are midway through the day, it gets dicey.
Saul: Do we own the fence? Answer: no, we’re renting it. But it’s rolled in to the cost of the Porta-potties. We got a great deal.
…
There are three questions for Council to answer:
Do they want to try fencing off Rio Vista park?
Do they want to charge admission to out-of-towners?
Do they want parking techs to be allowed to get vehicles towed?
Let’s take these one at a time:
Fencing off Rio Vista Park, around the falls?
Yes: Saul, Jane, Amanda, Lorenzo, Shane, Matthew No: Alyssa, who says she cannot sign onto anything without more details.
I think this is a good idea.
2. Charging an admission fee for out-of-towners?
No. There is not much appetite for charging a fee immediately. There are too many unknown details about how exactly we’d pre-register residents.
What about having a future conversation about charging an admission fee?
Yes to a conversation: Saul, Jane, Lorenzo, Amanda, Matthew No: Alyssa, Shane
3. Parking techs allowed to get someone towed?
Yes: Jane, Matthew, Lorenzo No: Saul , Amanda, Shane, Alyssa
So this fails.
…
We’re also moving forward with paid parking at the Lion’s Club:
So the idea is that it’s free for residents, as long as you register ahead of time:
You can also register online.
…
The workshop ran way over time. They didn’t start the council meeting until almost 7 pm.
Just one topic this week at City Council: the Ceasefire Resolution in Gaza. The meeting ran till almost 2 am. I feel like I really earned my “watching council so you don’t have to” stripes this week.
Here it is:
Hours 0:00 – 7:24: Should San Marcos approve a call for a ceasefire for the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza?
In writing this up, I mostly dropped my usual breezy kidding-around shtick. There’s just too much anger and intensity on this subject for me to poke the bear.
The San Marxist 