Every three years, we run a community survey. The first one was in 2022, and so 2025 is the second.
Methods:
They try to get a random sample of people by sending mailers out to households. They also open the survey up to anyone, online.
The responses are overwhelmingly older white homeowners in Kissing Tree.
I’m really not kidding:
where “Charlie” is the blue #3 area below:
and yes, they are mostly white home-owners:
This is a well-understood phenomenon by people who run surveys – different groups of people respond to surveys with different participation rates.
So they correct for it. What you do is you take the actual composition of San Marcos, based on census data. Then you weight your survey responses until they match the actual proportions.
For example:
Loosely speaking, if you’re 18-34 and you filled out the survey, your answers will get multiplied by 3. If you’re 35-54, your answers will get multiplied by 1/2, and if you’re 55+, your answers will get multiplied by 1/3.
Workshop: Heritage Tourism and Preservation Grants
“HOT” stands for Hotel Occupancy Taxes. How shall we spend our HOT money?
The city is proposing offering some grants to nonprofits who have some kind of historical preservation project.
City staff goes through a long list of slides. Who would be eligible? What kinds of projects are okay? How much are the grants for? What’s the rubric for evaluation? What’s the timeline? It’s very detailed.
What does Council say?
“Let’s kill this whole thing and just use the money for repairing the Dunbar School Home Education Building.”
It’s not a bad idea! I felt a little bad for the presenter, though.
It’s the only building left from the original campus of the Dunbar School.
We just talked about the Dunbar School a moment ago – it’s the original school for black children during segregation, named for the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar.
The Dunbar School was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
So the Dunbar Sistas are a group of women who played softball together as teens, decades ago, and are now some of the community anchors in San Marcos. They are the ones who originally came up with this idea. Two of them – Mittie Miller and Deborah Giles Webster – both spoke at the meeting about their process.
Here’s the plan:
This sounds great! So all those little plaques would commemorate important people, businesses, churches etc.
One thing that the Dunbar Sistas stress is the process for determining who will be featured on the walk. There’s a large network of Dunbar alumni, people who grew up in Dunbar over the past century, who may now be scattered across the country. They want decision-making to go to Dunbar alumni, as opposed to people who may be recent transplants to Dunbar. This seems reasonable.
The plan is to roll it out next fall:
Anyway, there weren’t any other neat pictures in the presentation for me to clip for you, but there is a ton of history at the Calaboose Museum and Dunbar Heritage Association.
We are putting together a Historic Preservation Plan. This will be pretty quick.
First off, I thought this background was interesting:
The presentation itself was mostly “How to Read the Preservation Plan” as opposed to the actual San Marcos content. But the plan is pretty readable, so I’ll just grab one or two interesting bits from it, and send you over.
For example, there’s a very detailed timeline, starting in time immemorial, with bits like so:
(Amanda Rodriguez: Could we add the names of the women to this photo? Staff: Absolutely!)
It’s all of the litter, and all of the repeated trampling of the banks, and the erosion of the aquatic wild rice and habitats for endangered species. It’s all bad.
3. The cost.
City staff really haven’t even brought up the price tag in the past few years, because the litter, damage to river, and lack of safety were so off the rails.
But of course, all solutions require people, and people’s labor costs money. So this is looming.
…
Solutions
The 2023 season was so bad that Council realized we need to do something. So in 2024, we passed a can ban. Summer 2024 was the first implementation.
So this spring, Council cautiously agreed to try Managed Access for 2025.
That means this:
around Rio Vista and the falls.
Everyone thinks these fences are very ugly and sad! They’re not wrong. But I’m going to make the case that the fences are a good first step. It is a work in progress.
Basically, the falls, swimming pool, and tennis courts at Rio Vista were fenced off. In order to access them, you had to walk to one of the three entrances:
On weekends and holidays, those entrances were staffed. They’d check to make sure you weren’t bringing in anything banned, like alcohol or a bunch of styrofoam plates.
On the big holiday weekends – Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day – they also closed off Cheatham street altogether:
They also increased staffing. There were at least ten more employees just to staff the entrances and exits on weekends and holidays. There are a lot of hands on deck, picking up trash, monitoring situations, and available for emergencies:
It’s a really big operation.
…
What does the public think?
At citizen comment for the workshop, three people spoke. I think they are all very involved in river clean-up efforts.
Major themes:
Fences significantly reduced the size of the crowds
Fences significantly reduced the amount of trash in the river
Fences significantly protected the riparian zones of the river, ie the wild rice and other environmental spots.
There is more work to do. There was still a ton of litter.
Let’s look at places that have done this well – for example, Copenhagen has a sustainable tourism program. Tourists can get perks if they pick up litter or take public transportation.
….
What does city staff say?
Litter started off rough, at the beginning of the summer.
Fences were put up at the end of May. Then:
Looking good!
And some data:
Note: July was much rainier and less-hot than usual. The 4th of July was pretty much rained out (while the tragedy was unfolding in Kerr County and elsewhere). So it wasn’t just strictly the fences.
Did visitors just go to a different part of the river?
Staff said no, they did not see an increased number of problems upstream or downstream from Rio Vista. It seems like everyone wants to be at the falls.
(It could still happen after a few years, of course. But it has not happened yet.)
…
Overall, everything seems optimistic!
That is my personal belief, too – that this year, things were less dangerous and destructive than they’ve been in the past.
…
So that’s 2025. What about the future?
Here are the big questions for Council today:
1. Do they want to keep fencing off Rio Vista in the future? (ie “Managed Access”)
2. Do they want to start charging out-of-towners for river access?
Let’s take these one at a time.
The fencing.
Another angle:
Everyone hates the big, bulky chain link look. Including me!
Can we at least make it look a little nicer?
Maybe!
Staff is not proposing that we put up permanent fencing. This would only go up between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
Council questions:
Q: Would we rent or buy the prettier fencing? A: We’d buy it. It would cost about $75K. Renting the fences this past summer was roughly $15K.
Q: People were cranky about the tennis courts being inside the fencing . Can we find a way to make them easier to access? A: Yes, we can definitely explore this for next year.
Bottom line: Does Council want to continue with the fences?
Mostly yes. Alyssa and Amanda are both a little squirrelly on the question, but they’re more yes than no.
Note: I am a hard yes. You only get one river, and overuse will kill your river. This is a dead on, textbook-example of a Tragedy of the Commons.
….
2. Should we charge admission?
The problem is that we’re running a giant operation here, all summer long, and it requires a lot of staff. Furthermore, it mostly isn’t San Marcos residents using the river.
This is an old slide from 2024:
(Zartico is a company that tracks cell phone data. We paid them to track people on the river and tell us where people went afterwards. Yes, it’s a teeny bit creepy.)
The point being, about 1/3 of the park visitors were local, and 2/3 were in from out of town. Here’s 4th of July from 2024:
More from San Marcos, but still under 50%.
No one is proposing that we charge admission to San Marcos residents. But should we charge out-of-town visitors an admission fee?
What does everyone else do?
Lots of cities charge fees:
….
And so now, San Marcos?
City staff is recommending yes, we should start charging.
Here is what they propose to council:
What does Council think?
Jane: we should start our season earlier than Memorial day. Answer: That just costs even more.
Alyssa: How would residents get a river pass? Answer: You’d sign up in person or online. Like getting a library card. It would be a physical hard copy.
Alyssa: One per household or one per person? Answer: Per person. Alyssa: Even kids? Answer: I mean, you all are council. You tell us what you want.
Amanda: I have strong reservations about this. The river is a natural resource. I don’t like the idea of commodifying it. I don’t like the precedent it sets. New Braunfels probably started out only charging a little, and now it’s $25 to set out a blanket. And their river is still trashed.
Jane: Our out-of-town visitors aren’t spending money here. They’re not contributing to the tax base that pays for these parks. I don’t want to charge residents, but I’m okay charging out-of-town guests. They need to share the cost.
Saul: How much revenue would this bring in? Answer: We have no idea. It’s hard to even figure out how many people go to the river.
Let’s break it into categories
1. San Marcos Residents
No one is proposing that we charge San Marcos residents. But there’d have to be some sort of free pass system.
Every time you add a layer of inconvenience, you trip up vulnerable residents. (Think: undocumented community members who don’t feel safe signing up, or harried single mothers who keep forgetting to sign up. Etc.) Alyssa and Amanda voice some of these concerns.
2. People just outside the city limits.
What about people who live nearby? Like you have a San Marcos mailing address, but you’re not officially in city limits?
Jane, Shane, Saul, Matthew: They should get a reduced admission price. Alyssa, Amanda, Lorenzo: they should be free.
3. Actual out-of-town visitors?
Lorenzo: Yes. We should charge them. Jane: Yes. Same. Alyssa: I don’t know. This needs more work. Amanda: Kids at least should be free. Saul: I agree on the free kids. Matthew: I’m fine with what staff proposed. Shane: [never turns on his microphone, I have no idea] Alyssa: Who’s gonna pay $100 for a season pass? Come on. This needs work.
Fair point, Alyssa.
Overall: It’s a little hard to follow, but I think this is where everyone lands:
Yes, charge out-of-town guests: Jane, Lorenzo, Shane, Saul, Matthew
Maybe. We’re not sure yet: Alyssa, Amanda
No one is a hard no.
What do I think?
I’m on the fence. I hate the increase in bureaucracy and bookkeepping, and I wish for a state where we just properly funded parks and local governments. (See also: socialized health care is much cheaper than private insurance because it’s so much less paperwork, bureaucracy, and red tape.)
I also hate the idea that everyone on the river would have to keep a plastic card on a lanyard around their neck.
On the other hand, here we are – with actual bills to pay and actual rivers to save, people to keep safe – and that all costs money.
Maybe the river pass can be made into a little bracelet?
…….
Lorenzo: can we hold an evening workshop instead of a 3 pm workshop, so that more residents can attend?
Everyone agrees this is a good idea.
Bottom line: City staff will bring back more rate models and Council will have another workshop. But it looks like the writing is on the wall. I think it’s likely.
…..
One last workshop topic.
Paid parking at the Lion’s Club
We’re midway through a pilot year of paid parking at the Lion’s Club. It’s free for all residents, but you do have to register. (Register here!)
How’s it been working?
Ok, so it just started.
A few notes:
They have not yet been ticketing anyone, but they’re about to start. (Apparently there have been problems with Texas State students. Students can park there, as residents who want to use the parks, but not to go attend class at Texas State. I have no idea how they can tell who is doing what.)
“ETJ” stands for extra-territorial jurisdiction, ie the people who live nearby the city, but not in the actual city limits.
The main question: do we want to charge people less if they live in the ETJ? On the one hand, they don’t pay property taxes. On the other hand, they do come to San Marcos to go shopping, and so they pay sales tax.
How do we want to handle people who live close to San Marcos?
Charge a reduced fee: Matthew, Shane, Jane
Keep it free: Alyssa, Amanda, Saul, Lorenzo
There’s some minor quibbling about what “close” should mean. Anyone in who lives in SMCISD? Anyone with a San Marcos mailing address? some third option? I think they settled on SMCISD.
This came up before here. Now we’re workshopping it.
The basic idea is that tenants should be able to meet up and talk about their landlord, or their living conditions, without fear of getting evicted.
This is the type of behavior that is protected:
Great!
And here’s the type of thing a Landlord is not allowed to do:
Sounds reasonable.
On the other hand, landlords also have some rights:
Seems reasonable.
Finally, you still have to abide by your lease.
….
My main question is about Rent-By-the Bedroom. We had a fantastic presentation on these, last year.
RBB complexes skirt rules by avoiding certain legal terms. Tenants don’t sign a “lease”, they sign an “installment contract”. So a lot of laws about tenants and landlords don’t apply to them.
Since that’s their game – swap out magic words to avoid legal status – we need to make very sure that our language is broad enough to include them.
I’m looking at the definitions section from the proposal:
“Dwelling” and “landlord” don’t seem broad enough to include “Installment Contracts”.
(Also: the definition of “Lease” uses the word “Landlord”, and the definition of “Landlord” uses the word “Lease” so things are getting circular here.)
Other than that, this is a great step forward!
…..
Workshop #2: SMPD Vehicle rental policy:
This has also been in the works – literally for years. Here’s where they’re landing:
Great!
….
Workshop #3: Update to the Airport Master Plan:
We have an Airport Master Plan that was approved in 2021.
(Honestly, I’m kind of guessing what they said, based on the slides. I was distracted. Sorry about that!)
This runway is going to get a glow up:
And it sounds like there will some day be a passenger terminal out front:
This will come around for approval during a regular council meeting.
We get money from property taxes and sales taxes. In San Marcos, we’re split pretty much 50-50 between the two:
Our property tax rate is on the higher side:
but there are some reasons for that. For example, we have a lot of tax-exempt property:
particularly because of the university. You can also see Gary Job Corp on that map.
(I always love it when I-35 is drawn East-West.)
and also because our houses are less expensive on average:
and so we struggle to pull in enough revenue.
So altogether, here’s what an average person pays in property taxes:
Now if you’re a homeowner, your property taxes also include schools, county, and special roads district. So it’s actually significantly higher than that. That’s just the part that goes to the city.
Here’s how we’re doing on property taxes:
Sales tax dropped in 2024, and it sent our budget into a bit of a tailspin. But it’s working its way back up.
Here’s how much the city spends on each person, on average:
hey, that’s a bargain! $4610 worth of services for only $1798. That’s a better ROI than you’ll get from the stock market.
The state legislature is always trying to make everything harder on the cities:
because they are counterproductive twats.
Here’s how it might affect San Marcos:
…
Basically, we’re in a bind. Here’s two slides describing how we’re caught between a rock and a hard place:
and
Especially notice those last two bullets. The city is growing and inflation has been a big thing, and yet budgets have gotten leaner. This is not sustainable.
This brings us up to the current scenario. Council has a few choices:
The first one is the “No-New-Revenue” rate. If the property tax rate is 62.78¢, the average home owner will pay the same amount they paid last year.
In this case, we can skate by this year, and we’d be in the hole next year.
The next one is the Long-Term Focused Tax Rate, 64.96¢. This helps us keep up with inflation and growing expenses, over a longer term.
The last one is the Voter-Approval tax rate, 70.47¢. They’d never go for this, but in theory it would bring in a lot of money. Anything above 70.47¢ requires voter approval at the ballot box.
[Note: The (3,000,000) isn’t what it looks like. That’s balanced out by the “Fund balance in excess of 25%” line above.]
So what would we do, if we did the middle column of 64.96¢?
It helps plan for some financial cliffs that are looming.
…
Here’s these three tax rates, again:
The middle column buys us an extra year to plan for the looming financial cliffs. (The rate in the third column ends up lasting until 2028, and then we go to the red.)
…
You can probably see why that $9 million from the data center looks so helpful. 😦
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What does Council think?
Matthew: I’m going with the ¢64.96 rate. Saul: Same. ¢64.96
Lorenzo: If we go with the middle rate, will we be up this same creek without a paddle next year? Answer: Somewhat. The state legislature may hamstring us, yes.
Lorenzo: How does tax rates translate into revenue? Answer: Every penny brings in about $800K.
Lorenzo: I want to pick a number that heads off a projected shortfall in 2027. So I think roughly ¢67-68.
Jane: How would we prioritize cuts? Answer: It starts getting into staff, because we’re already so lean. That’s a very hard question.
Alyssa: I don’t know.. I don’t have enough information. I’m willing to lean towards the middle, but I need to know more about how we’d use that extra $1.9 million. Answer: Council can prioritize how we use it. Alyssa: Then I can go with the ¢64.96.
Amanda: The legislative damage is highly likely to pass this session. Originally I was thinking ¢64.96, but I’m open to Lorenzo’s point about the ¢68. I want to take care of our employees, and making sure we’re keeping up there.
Jane: I want to see the impact on the average voter.
Amanda: Is it possible to see the impact on the average renter, as well?
Jane: I’m comfortable with the ¢64.96. And if the state school tax exemption passes in November, I can go a little higher.
They all want to see the impact on the average tax bill. How much would these new rates increase the tax bill?
…
They also discuss utility rates and other things. The Citizens Utility Advisory Board is recommending a 4% increase in electric rates.
This is slightly less of an increase than last year. Everyone’s goal is to make slow, smooth, steady increases, because otherwise after a few years, you have to make a giant leap in rate increases. That’s much worse
Commercial rates are a little higher:
Similar for the water/wastewater rates, trash, and community enhancement.
Here’s how all these increases will impact your monthly bill:
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I’m returning to the end of the regular meeting, now. In Item 19, city staff returned with the answers to some of the questions above.
How would these different property tax rates affect someone’s property tax bill?
2. A list of possible things Council could fund with the extra money. (I couldn’t get a clear screenshot of this, though.)
Everyone has to weigh in with their max tax rate. 67.69¢: Alyssa, Matthew, Saul, Jane 68.17¢: Shane, Lorenzo, (but not committing. Just to give wiggle room), Amanda (same)
So! 67.69¢ is the upper bound this year for the tax rate.
Back in 2022, the city put out a community survey, to find out how happy people are with life in San Marcos and with city services. Now it’s time for the 2025 follow-up survey.
This workshop was mostly about tinkering with the five freebie questions that the city gets to individualize. It was pretty mundane, so I didn’t bother to write it up.
Keep an eye out for the survey over the next few months! And share it with people who don’t generally respond to city surveys.
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Workshop 2: Utility late fees and reconnection fees.
This has been a discussion for the past year, most recently here. Bascially, there was a lot of money available to help people pay their utility bills, but very little of it was getting spent on people who needed help. They’ve (hopefully) fixed that by making the application form much shorter and easier.
The second issue was late fees and reconnection fees. If you already can’t pay, do we really need to charge you more as punishment? The Citizens Utility Advisory Board (CUAB) is bringing back recommendations on what we could change.
There are two main questions:
How much of a penalty do we want to charge people, once their bill is overdue?
How much does it cost the city to disconnect and reconnect someone’s water/gas/electricity?
Penalty:
We used to charge a 10% late fee. CUAB is recommending a 5% late fee.
Disconnect/reconnect:
Here we’re just trying to cover our costs. It’s not a punishment. Back in 2014, we set $40 as the fee. In 2025, it now costs $95 to reconnect the utilities.
The problem is that if you decrease the late fee by 5% and then increase the reconnection fee by $55, they kind of cancel each other out:
So Council is a little bummed out over this.
Jane: Can people get late fees and reconnection fees paid for by the Utility assistance program? Answer: Just late fees, but not reconnection fees.
Jane: That was an oversight. I wish we’d talked that out when we were dealing with utility assistance.
…
They end up going in circles for awhile – should they send it back to CUAB? Should they split out water from electricity? Should they subsidize disconnection/reconnection fees? What if the state passes restrictions affecting late fees?
In the end, they decide to accept the proposal for now, and also reduce the water disconnection fee to $40. This will come back around for final approval during a council meeting.
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.
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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:
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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.
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