Category: 3 pm Workshops

Bonus! 3 pm workshops

by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

Workshops are big this week! There are two:

  1. Fiscal budget bad news for next year
  2. Riverfront parks update, for summer 2025

But First, Workshop Citizen Comment:

Just three speakers. Two in favor of fencing off the river and making people enter through managed entry points.

  1. 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.
  2. 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”.

Time for this meme:

(via) mmhmm.

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

I agree with all of them! I’d go for #4 myself.

Bonus! Bonus! Workshop #2, 5/20/25

by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

Workshop 2: Riverfront Parks Update

It’s summertime! That means it’s time for this:

Can we please not destroy it this year?

…

Last year, we implemented a can ban.

It did not go very well.

Mostly because the park was mobbed with so many visitors that staff couldn’t keep up:

We saw this last year:

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:

  1. Do they want to try fencing off Rio Vista park?
  2. Do they want to charge admission to out-of-towners?
  3. Do they want parking techs to be allowed to get vehicles towed?

Let’s take these one at a time:

  1. 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.

Bonus! 3 pm workshops, 4/16/25

by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

Workshop: Location of the New City Hall

We need a new city hall. Ours was built back in the 1970s, when San Marcos had 25K people. It’s falling apart and tiny. (Discussed in 2022 and in 2024.)

Last fall, we picked an advisory committee of community members. They’ve been meeting over the spring.

…

The big decision for today: should we build it on the north side or south side of Hopkins?

And here’s where the controversy kicks in. Here’s the city’s versions of those two spots:

Zooming in on the north parcel:

So this is the crux of the controversy – what happens to the skate park and dog park? The city posted about this to Facebook, where it blew up.

…

Citizen Comment: About 12 people show up to defend the parks. This is actually a huge number – both because this is a workshop, and because it’s at 3 pm on a Tuesday.

About halfway through, City Manager Stephanie Reyes breaks in and says:

Early on, consultants talked about maybe moving the skate park and dog park. But listen: We are NOT recommending moving the skate park! We really are not. The dog park, maybe. But definitely not the skate park!

I don’t know how this grew legs – it was just a committee discussion. This wasn’t concrete plans to move the skate park! Anyway, we hear you loud and clear. No one is moving the skate park.

(I’m paraphrasing – that is not a direct quote.)

Anyway, I got you Ms. Reyes! Here’s where people got the impression:

And in all the drawings – like above – and even in this very presentation:

So anyway, the community uses the skate park really heavily. City staff heard many, many comments about how much everyone loves the skate park.

The skate park will NOT be moved. Great!

…

Confidential to council: Seeing how heavily it is used, you could even expand the skate park! That would be pretty popular. Add some bathrooms and shade?

…

Ok, now that the skate park is safe, what is the presentation about?

The steering committee has been meeting over the spring. They’re inspired to bring the old razzle-dazzle:

Sugarland, Wylie, Southlake, and Frisco are all bringing it.

…

So back to the two parcels:

This area has the river, lots of railroads, and Hopkins running through it:

So there are some challenges. Like flooding:

And finicky rules, like this purple part:

The purple part is dedicated park land. In order to build a razzle-dazzle City Hall, you have to have a Public-Private-Partnership. In other words, it’s a city hall with some stores, or coffee shops, or sell some city land to a developer to do whatever.

But the city needs voter approval on the purple part. Since it’s parkland, it stays public unless the voters approve letting private companies use it.

See that little blue square in the middle? It is not dedicated parkland. It’s more flexible.

It used to be the Armory Building:

That’s Google Maps, from June 2013.

Here’s April 2014:

And here’s June 2015:

Going, going, gone!

So that little field already has voter approval – that was dedicated back in 1959. We could put a private company there, without voter approval.

(I don’t like that option.)

….

How much will all this cost, anyway?

So the cost is the same, either way.

There are still plenty of decisions for the future:

  • Surface parking or underground parking?
  • Public-Private-Partnership or go it alone?
  • Where would Council temporarily relocate, if we went with the south side?
  • Would it be a beautiful gateway on the North Side?

Here’s what the Advisory Committee said:

Here’s the summary of pros and cons:

The Advisory Committee settled on the North Parcel, but still felt good about the South Parcel:

…

So what does Council think?

Matthew: North side!

  • I’m a neighborhood man! My main concern is drainage. Water runs into Rio Vista neighborhood. Put City Hall in the north side, and install a state of the art drainage system in.
  • I like the idea of a Civic Corridor, with City Hall, the library, the activity center, and the parks all in a row.

Staff clearly states that the drainage will be all new, on either side.

Jane: South side!

  • I do like the idea of a big Northside Gateway.
  • Let’s do two uses: Keep all the business uses on the south side. The public only comes here for birth certificates and developers. On the north side, add some more recreational uses that complement the dog park and the skate park. Restrooms, improvements, etc.
  • Make the south side entrance more prominent, though.
  • The north side really does flood, too. Do we want our new City Hall to get flooded? The railroad forms a dam on the back side.

Note: I agree with Jane!

Lorenzo: Is structured parking going to drive up the cost?
Answer: Yes, but it’s probably off the table either way. Underground parking will flood. Parking garages are expensive.

Amanda: I’m freaked out by the price tag, and prices are only going to go up. I’m with the Mayor, here.

Shane: I like the North Side because I like new construction! The old one looks dreary and old.

Amanda: The north side loses the dog park, unless you pay a huge price tag for a parking garage.
City Manager: We have options for relocating the dog park . This will free up the Parks and Rec building and possibly the land near the Veteran’s Memorial. So the dog park would stay in this same corridor.

Saul: Are the structural problems of the current building caused by the train? That’s my concern with the South side.
Answer: Yes, but current architecture would be built to deal with that.

Lorenzo: If we build on the South Side, would we actually improve the north side?
Answer: Depends what kind of partnerships we can build. That’s Phase II.

Alyssa: I’m voting for the North Side.

Lorenzo and Matthew are really determined to make an economic argument that really isn’t there. They keep guessing about demolition costs or whatever. City staff keep gently correcting them – no, those costs are very small, relative to all the design decisions yet to come.

…

My two cents: The north side is a terrible idea. Really.

First: You don’t get more park land in town. This is it. Don’t use it up.

Second: a massive number of people turned up to defend the skate park. A giant, razzle-dazzle building will loom over it, literally. It will change the vibe. A skate park is not going to feel the same if it is nestled in the backside of a flashy new business park.

Build up the park side for the people! Add bathrooms, add water refill stations. Rebuild the business half of City Hall on the south side.

…

The vote

North Side: Shane, Matthew, Lorenzo, Alyssa

South Side: Saul, Jane, Amanda

Honestly, I was surprised by this! The steering committee was lukewarm in their recommendation. Their decision reads as “Both options are good, but I guess we tip towards the north.”

The public, then, said cried out, “We feel STRONGLY about keeping the north side as park land.”

And council went with the advisory committee??

…

Q&A from the press and public:

Even knowing the skate park will stay, people are pretty angry! No one seems to like this decision.

  • I love the skate park. Why was there no representation of the dog park or skate park on the steering committee?
  • Time line? And will you still push for recreation?
  • A big building with concrete and fountains is not usable by the public the way the current corridor is.
  • I have thoughts but not a formal question
  • I don’t buy the economic argument and I don’t like going with the decision that doesn’t inconvenience you personally.
  • How does having a flashy new building benefit the citizens of San Marcos?
  • Why not have the Gateway be beautiful parkland over a flashy parkland? The foundations and drainage, why not address that?
  • How do we get on this committee? What’s up with this committee?

Bonus! 3 pm workshops, 4/1/25

by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

Three quick ones!

Workshop 1: Bicycle Friendly Communities.

    The League of American Bicyclists hands out awards.  We’re bronze! We’ve been bronze since 2018, actually. But we were renewed!

    Overall, Texas is mid.

    It takes a fair amount of work to get this designation.  Along the way, we got some survey data:

    They also gave us a report card:

    Ouch. Hmm.  Maybe I don’t know what “bronze” actually means. That we’re trying?

    They included 17 recommendations.  We’re a work in progress.  Read ‘em all here.

    Council asks a few questions:
    – Bike incentives? Access? (no)
    – Do we reach out to businesses? (no)
    – Demographics of survey responses? (no)

    I’m being pretty negative, but the city is doing good work on a shoestring budget.

    Remember: on average, it costs about $1,015/month to own a car, whereas it’s about $29/month to commute by bike. San Marcos is full of people who might prefer to bike – but only if it feels safe, and only if they actually have a bike.

    …

    Workshop 2: Spin Scooters

    These came up before, last July.

    We’re talking about these: 

    They’ve been around since 2021. 

    You download an app, and it tells you where the closest one is, and you can rent it and ride around the Scooter Zone.

    Originally they were contained to this blue area:

    Last May, the Scooter People asked if they could grow.  So we gave them a 9 month pilot period to extend to this region:

    Also we allowed them to become 24/7. Before, they shut down overnight.

    So how did the pilot program go?

    There haven’t been any incidents!

    Everyone is fine making that region permanent.

    Would we like to fire up a new pilot region, here?

    Sure.

    One final note: Are these actually affordable?

    It costs $1 to unlock, and then $.30 plus taxes per minute. So let’s ballpark that it costs $6 for a 15 minute commute. That means that one daily trip would cost about $360/month.

    That’s actually kinda pricey. Still cheaper than owning a car, but not, like, frugal.

    …

    Workshop 3: Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan

    Okay, this topic is always fascinating.

    So back in 1991, there was a lawsuit by the Sierra Club against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Sierra Club sued for neglect under the Endangered Species Act. Their case was that if the Edwards Aquifer drops too low, then the endangered species in the Comal and San Marcos rivers could go extinct. And they won!

    So the Edwards Aquifer Authority was created, and they got some legal power. This is important!

    (hey, look at this:

    Probably some of you know all those names, but Jane’s jumped out at me. Good on her.)

    Here’s the key: The EAA is allowed to cap much water gets used, and they are allowed to charge organizations to use the water. They sell credits to San Antonio, New Braunfels, San Marcos, Texas State University, Kyle, and so on. Then they use that revenue to fund conservation measures.

    Today’s presentation is on the Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan, or EAHPC. This is how they actual take care of the rivers.

    So what do they do?

    SO MUCH! They spent about $10 million on San Marcos alone.

    They do a bunch of underwater gardening, to make sure there’s enough habitat for the little endangered fishies, and also the endangered wild rice:

    They fence off the spots where the bank is getting eroded and trampled to death, and nurture it back to life:

    That photo is just upstream of the falls. It’s as if you’re standing on the island with the big cypress trees, looking back towards the bank.

    They hire people to go spear-fishing for non-native species:

    The one on the left is those little sucker-fishes that people put in their aquariums to eat the algae and keep in clean. The one on the right is tilapia.

    Council asks: what happens to the fish?
    Answer: The guy who does the spear-fishing holds a big fish fry and serves tilapia fish tacos, down at Ivar’s river pub.

    Council: What about the sucker-fish?
    Answer: Don’t eat those. Gross.

    But also: the San Marcos Discovery Center has a fish shelter! Like they’ll take your old fish if you don’t want an aquarium any more, and if you are getting started, you can go adopt fish for free from them.

    Don’t dump your old fish in the river, everybody. Take them to the fish library.

    …

    What else?

    They pay for scuba divers and snorkelers to collect trash out of the river, twice a week, all summer long:

    They keep those red bobbers around the wild rice and sensitive spots:

    They put the big limestone rocks in at certain river swim spots, and then fenced off a bunch of the other spots:

    In other words, they were like “Let’s contain the swimming to a few really great swimming spots, and not worry about vegetation there. Then we’ll protect the rest of the river for vegetation.”

    Also the limestone rocks keep the bank from eroding.

    They did a bunch of stormwater detention that keep the nasty stuff from running into the river:

    and they also fixed up Sessom’s Creek:

    …

    I mean, let’s pause here. This is wild, right? This is the Edward’s Aquifer:

    Everyone in that dark blue region would just be draining the aquifer dry, if the EAA wasn’t around. Instead there’s been this massive coordinated effort, resulting in $10 million worth of projects to protect our river?!

    That’s insane and beautiful. You’ve got to cherish this and really breathe it in.

    (Especially during this larger dark time. I hope this program is not dependent on federal funding.)

    …

    But wait, there’s more! You can’t hold these deals back!

    The scientists study and monitor all the endangered critters:

    They scoop them up and take them on field trips, over to McCarty Lane or down to Uvalde:

    That way, if there was a massive natural disaster or chemical spill or something, they could re-introduce the species after the river was healthy and cleaned up again.

    …

    What’s next? The current EAHCP plan runs from 2013-2027. So it’s about to expire, and they’re mapping out the next one to run from 2028 – 2058.

    They’ll do a lot of the same stuff – make sure the river stays flowing, make sure the people don’t destroy the environment, make sure the endangered species are still paddling around in healthy numbers. But they’ll also have to respond to a hotter, drier world, which makes this all harder.

    There’s some technical details to the new plan, and honestly, you should just watch the whole presentation here. (Or read all the slides here.) 10/10, no notes.

    Bonus! 3 pm workshops, 3/18/25

    by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

    Two workshops this week!

    Workshop #1: Update on Downtown plan
    Workshop #2: Privacy policy on SMPD License Plate Scanners

    ….

    Workshop #1: Listen, this was great. I just ran out of time to write it up properly, so it’s a little short.

    We approved the Downtown plan in 2023.

    So now we’re implementing it:

    So far, we’ve done a bunch of great stuff!

    Here’s what we’re in the middle of doing:

    And here’s what we’re going to do next:

    And here’s what we need, to do it:

    Like I said, I’m shortchanging a really enjoyable presentation. Go listen!

    …

    Workshop #2: License Plate Readers

    In February, SMPD asked Council to approve a bunch of license plate readers.

    We had literally just talked about privacy with respect to technology, and these definitely require privacy protections. So we postponed the purchase until we had an updated privacy policy.

    Here we are! Policy time.

    …

    What is FLOCK?

    So in other words, there are seventeen intersections in San Marcos that are recording your license plate every time you drive by. (And soon there will be thirty locations.)

    Is that reassuring? There’s still a lot of ways that this can go wrong.

    How it works:

    So basically, SMPD owns the data, but it’s located on the FLOCK system. If you have a crime in mind, you log in and run a query, and then it tells you which license plates were at that location, or it tells you all places a specific car went, or whatever.

    Council had three big concerns:

    We’ll take these one at a time.

    Retention periods: how long do they keep the data?

    We’re currently 30 days, and Chief Standridge makes the case that we need to stay at 30 days.

    There’s no slide for this part, but he’s basically saying, “People don’t report crimes right away. Sometimes the crime isn’t even discovered for a week or two. If you don’t have the crime reported for two weeks, that eats up a lot of your time to query the data base for the license plate.”

    He had his crime analyst go back into the system and pull the average length of time people waited to report various crimes, in 2024 in San Marcos. He says:

    • Criminal sexual contact: average 513 days delay
    • Forcible rape: average 640 days delay
    • Credit card ATM fraud (ie, steal your wallet or purse from your car and go to the nearest ATM): delay of 103 days
    • Shoplifting: average 21 days delay.
      (This is because stores submit the theft to corporate, and corporate decides whether or not it meets the threshhold to bring in the local SMPD.)

    I mean, ok. This makes the case that the cameras aren’t actually helping you solve most of these crimes, but point taken on the delay in reporting.

    …

    Onto 2: Privacy Concerns:

    They’re proposing a bunch of amendments to current policy.

    Great.

    The “TBP” bit stands for “Texas Best Practices”, which is an accreditation thing.

    Amanda asks if we can include “economic status” to the list of protected statuses? In other words, no targeting an intersection because it’s known that homeless people are camping near there.

    Sounds great to me! Everyone is on board with this.

    Next:

    What the hell – until now, you didn’t need reasonable suspicion or probable cause to run a query?!

    Anway, now you do.

    There’s a bunch of details here!

    • You get regular training.
    • You have to supply a case number when you run a query.
    • Later on, someone else in SMPD will be double-checking all the queries to make sure they make sense.
    • SMPD will not give the data to any private entity.

    These are definitely huge improvements.

    …

    We’re sticking with 30 days, but we’re no longer going to grant exceptions:

    3. Data sharing with other organizations:

    There’s going to be an MOU, or Memorandum of Understanding. Any other law agency that wants San Marcos data has to sign this MOU.

    The MOU isn’t written yet. But it’s going to require that officers in other jurisdictions follow all the same rules as us. Specifically, there must be a case number. You can’t just be looking people up.

    And there will be a portal with general information available to the community.

    Finally, misusing the system is a crime:

    and you can get punished for it:

    …

    One weird thing about Flock Cameras is that anyone can buy them and join in. The outlet malls probably have them, your apartment complex or HOA could have them. Anyone who cares enough about who is coming and going can buy one.

    Will we share our data with any old HOA or shopping mall?

    Not anymore!! (But JFC, we sure used to play fast and loose with this data. The deleted part in red is wild.)

    There’s some discussion of ICE in all this. We’ve opted out of immigration tracking. But there are some laws (SB4) which may or may not make this more complicated.

    …

    My opinion: These are really big amendments that make the system safer. I am still wary about license plate readers and Flock Safety, but this is at least much better.

    Bonus! 3 pm workshops, 3/4/25

    by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

    There are two workshops: one very short and one very long.

    1. Evoke Wellness.

    Back in December, Council had a lot of questions for these guys.  They offer mental health and addiction treatment for people referred over by the police.  We’ve allocated 150K of Covid money for this. This is a follow up discussion with the director at Evoke.

    Amanda: What’s it look like if you’re receiving services?

    The director gives an extremely detailed answer!

    • Prescreen for eligibility. Detox? Residential? Intensive Outpatient?
    • Say we’re starting with detox. Then there’s an evaluation and intake process.
    • Then you’re seen by nursing staff to get orders from the medical director on the detox protocol, medication regimen
    • Detox lasts 5-7 days. Completely voluntary. You’re free to leave at any point.
    • Residential: 21-28 days. Could be detox and then residential.
    • In the residential part: first there’s a biopsych-social assessment: trauma history, drug use history, family relationships, everything. You need a full picture to treat the whole person.
    • Clinical team and medical team working together to monitor the patient 24/7.
    • During the day: like school, 6 hours a day. Learn about substance abuse and mental health conditions, tools, coping skills to hopefully achieve longterm sobriety.
    • Breakfast, meds, 9:30-5:30 programming, community involvement with 12-step panels holding meetings with clients.
    • You also get a therapist and case manager. The case manager will help with the discharge process.
    • Therapist meets weekly and as needed.
    • 6 hours/day of group therapy.
    • Longer lengths of stay produce better outcomes. Typically 28-35 days.
    • Discharge plans: typically clients take the clinical recommendation for a sit down placement in a PHP (partial hospital hospitalization) – lower level of care, higher level of freedom, and so own down the levels of care.

    Amanda: How often is the intake the first time the person’s ever run through their trauma?
    Answer: Depends if they’ve ever had treatment before. Could be first time, could have relapsed.

    Amanda: Typical client to staff ratio?
    Answer: 8:1 ratio, plus nursing staff and on-call medical director and leadership team.

    Amanda: On the discharge plan: If you don’t want to go through everything, can you still get a discharge plan?
    Answer: Yes. And if they won’t accept the discharge plan, our case managers will help connect them with resources that work for them.

    Amanda: What about people that are indigent? How does medication work upon discharge?
    Answer: For all clients, detox meds are covered for free, for 5-7 days. They are responsible for their medications, but if they have no resources, we will keep providing it. The discharge coordinator will work with them to find the community resources to stay on their medications.

    Alyssa: Last year, I asked for info about Evoke. They were in the process of getting a mental health license – did that happen?
    Answer: We are licensed for co-occuring disorders. There must be substance disorder with a mental health disorder. Actually pretty rare to have a substance issue without a mental health issue, so this is pretty much all our patients. We do not currently serve clients that only have a mental health issue and no substance abuse.

    Alyssa: This helps San Marcos?
    Chief Standridge: The goal is jail diversion. We’re using funds from both San Marcos and Hays money. If they have insurance, we use that first. If they’re indigent, we try to use our funds. But only if they’re residents of San Marcos.

    Everyone is really pleased by the high quality of the answers given by the director.

    Alyssa: I’m very hopeful? There’s a lot of structural root causes and obstacles that have to be overcome, and we have to think about those when it’s time to budget. And the public defenders office has been really helpful in locating resources. But I am anxious about the rise in need for support services. We’re setting people up for failure if we don’t supply resources.

    Shane: I’m tickled to death! How it all came together, as a team.

    (This is Covid money, so we’ll have to figure out how to fund it going forward.)

    …

    Workshop 2:  SMPD. This is a 2 hour presentation!

    This is SMPD’s opportunity to put their best foot forward.  This is a description of all the trainings and guard rails in place at SMPD.  Everything is couched in really positive terms – “Do we make mistakes? Sure! But we then unpack it and learn from it.”  

    This isn’t bad! It’s totally fine. It’s what any other department would do. However, a police department requires an extra level of skepticism, because of the sordid history leading up to this moment in time.  

    Usually I’d use Council questions to look for cracks in the presentation. But they ran out of time, because the council meeting starts at 6 pm.

    So this is a very glowing presentation, without any opportunity to give a counter-narrative. Anyway, I’m just the messenger. Don’t shoot me.

    …

    Chief Standridge came here four years ago. We’re kind of summarizing the internal protocols that he’s implemented over this time.

    There are five different speakers.

    Speaker #1: Internal changes

    “ABLE” stands for Active Bystander for Law Enforcement. This is basically like “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk.” How do you create an environment where cops will tattle on each other?

    The goal is for the consequences of not intervening to be bigger than the consequences of intervening. They do some training around interventions as well.

    Here’s how many internal cases they’ve dealt with:

    I mean, it’s absolutely impossible to interpret this. Is this a lot, or a little? How often are incidents going unreported? Would I agree with the outcomes if I knew all the details of the incidents?

    There’s no way that PD could answer these questions! But it also means that we can’t really makes sense of this data.

    It’s like if five people go to the doctor for measles, and the doctor treats three of them, and diagnoses one with allergies and one with mumps.

    • That doesn’t tell you much about the number of measles cases in the rest of the town
    • It also doesn’t tell you if the doctor is making correct diagnoses

    Both those things would be much harder to figure out.

    Here are the investigations that were found to be substantiated:

    In 2021, we had one IA investigator. Now we have four. So that definitely helps have more eyes looking out for bad behavior.

    …

    The Event Review Board

    The Event Review Board reviews every incident, use of force, pursuit, and preventable accident. They try to see what the department could change to reduce these events.

    It’s a broad group of people and they’re supposed to look at any potential event, no matter how minor.

    Some data:

    Again, I just don’t have enough context to make sense of these numbers.

    The speaker might have said given good context! But this was a three hour presentation, and if she did, I didn’t jot it down in my notes.

    Also:

    None of these were available last April, when Malachi Williams was killed. Alyssa brings this up.

    Amanda asks about the costs of these?

    Taser 10: $343K for 123 officers, or about $2789 per officer, per year. (Includes the Taser 10, body cameras, unlimited video storage, training, and software licensing.)
    BolaWrap: $1,299.99 each, and $38.99 each for cartridgets
    40 mm foam bullet launcher thing: $1,273.50 each

    I don’t know if each officer gets each thing, but that would come to $5362 per officer. With 123 officers, it’s about $660K.

    Look, I want the officers to use less lethal force. I’m just pointing out that SMPD spends bigger sums of money, and they do it much more quickly and easily than any other department.

    …

    This next thing is actually really great.

    Suppose you stop someone and they don’t speak English. You open up this Voyce app, and there’s a live translator. You pay by the minute.

    Notice they can provide sign language as well. (But it only works if officers remember that people can be deaf. This would not have helped John Kelley, the deaf man that was tased in 2019 for not responding when SMPD told him to stop.)

    The speaker says that there was one time that they needed a Mandarin translater at 3 am. This is pretty invaluable for that. (It was originally designed for the medical community. Seems invaluable there, too.)

    This app doesn’t help you figure out what language the other person is speaking though. You have to use google or something.

    That was all the first speaker!

    …

    Next speaker: Accreditation

    So I guess not all the PDs are accredited, but now we are?

    We’re not there yet, but we’re working towards it.

    Basically you have to come up with policies that satisfy the agency in these areas:

    You have to show compliance with 173 best practices.

    (This meeting was the day when it was super windy and there was all the spooky smoke and dust hanging over the city. Everyone’s alarms kept going off for the evacuations up in Kyle.)

    Anyway, it sounds like it’s a ton of work:

    And then you have to stay accredited:

    …

    Onto the next speaker!

    This one is super interesting – it’s on our 911 call center.

    Basically, there’s a nationwide shortage of 911 dispatchers. We used to have 9 vacancies. We filled over half of them, and we’ve got a current batch of highers to fill the rest.

    What happened is that we started paying a reasonable salary, and got a reputation as a good place to work. So we’re in a much healthier spot now.

    911 callers also have language barriers. Instead of the VOYCE app, they use something called CyraCom:

    Alyssa points out that this happened in the original 911 call involving Malachi Williams. The caller only spoke Spanish. While they were connecting with CyraCom, there was just this awful dead silence, where the caller had no idea whether or not they were going to get any help.

    Alyssa suggests having a few pre-scripted lines like, “One moment while we connect with a translator” or something. This is a great idea.

    We’re also trying a new program:

    This is a program where they transfer mental health calls out to trained mental health providers, who will connect the person with local resources, or stay on the line and talk the person through whatever’s going on.

    They can also transfer the call back to 911, if they think we need to send out an emergency response, after all. The responder then goes right out, because the call is already in the system.

    They’ve been doing it since November. It turns out that most of the calls do come back to us, after all? And we end up sending someone out. It’s a work in progress!

    …

    Next speaker! The SMPD Mental Health Unit.

    I don’t know what the training to be a Mental Health Officer really means. Is it a course? Is it multiple courses? Is it like a Master’s degree? Are you supervised by a mental health professional?

    (I’m sure I could look it up, but I’m just trying to first get this whole entry out on time.)

    It sounds like they do good things: they sit with people who are scared and nervous before testifying or going to court. They get food boxes from Hays County Food Bank if someone needs it. They’re generally problem-solving and checking in on people’s well-being. They will sometimes stay with someone for months, making regular follow ups to help manage someone’s care.

    Here, have some data:

    An “emergency detainment” is if someone is an immediate danger to themselves of others. They try to avoid doing that, though. It may mean taking them to an ER or a substance abuse facility. (But not jail.)

    …

    Next speaker! What comes next with Mental Health Officers?

    Here’s what the state is doing:

    It used to be that officers had two options:

    • Take someone to an emergency room
    • Take someone to jail and go through courts.

    Now we’ve got more options. The state created a big Mental Health Officer framework in 2015.

    Here’s what we’ve got so far:

    Here’s what we’re aiming for:

    …

    Next speaker! Context of Crime.

    We report crime in two ways:

    We are transitioned in 2018/2019 from UCR to NIBRS, which is better data. But any longterm comparison requires UCR data.

    Longterm violent crime:

    Short term crime rates:

    Note from me: On the motor vehicle theft, this is happening everywhere:

    But it’s always worth remembering that crime is way down, overall:

    …

    Back to the presentation.

    More crime trends:

    and specifically violent crimes:

    Saul asks a great question – does this include Texas State data?
    Answer: No. They have their own police and their data is not included.

    Again, this is mostly just following national trend lines, as the nation returns to baseline after Covid:

    It’s still a good thing!

    And it’s still way, way lower than 30 years ago:

    This recent data also corresponds time-wise with Chief Standridge arriving in 2021. So we are simultaneously implementing new strategies:

    There’s a special victims unit:

    They partner with Hays-Caldwell Women’s Shelter.

    …

    Next up is Chief Standridge! He is very apologetic.

    There is a specific Chief’s Advisory Panel. In order to get community feedback, they drew up some questions about the public’s crime-related fears.

    The plan was for everyone on the panel to chat up their neighbor and get some informal feedback. Max Baker offered to digitize the survey and share it with the San Marcos Civics Club.

    When staff got the responses, they threw out anything that didn’t seem relevant to the question at hand. Chief Standridge is extremely apologetic to this. He apologizes profusely and specifically to Max and the public.

    Here are the remaining answers:

    He promises to get the full data, including the extra answers, out as quickly as possible.

    (My personal answer is car crashes on I-35. That terrifies me.)

    …

    By this point, it is 5:30, and the looming 6 pm meeting starts to take over the presentation.

    Councilmembers have lots of questions, but there’s not really time for them.

    …

    Next presentation! School Resource Officers.

    SROs are supposed to be three things: Counselor, educator, and law enforcement:

    But not these things:

    We have five total:

    We’ve been doing this since Columbine, and most of the community is pretty happy with it:

    …

    Back to Chief Standridge:

    He sums up with this program for the next year:

    At this point, they are almost out of time. There are slides on the Marijuana Decriminalization Dashboard, but he doesn’t get to them. But it’s all publicly available here.

    The full slide show is also available here.

    …

    There’s a very quick Q&A, but it’s rushed and haphazard. Hopefully there will be a real Q&A scheduled in the future.

    Holy moly, that was long.

    Bonus! 3 pm workshops

    by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

    Workshop #1: Utility Payment Assistance

    Here’s the situation: We’ve got city-owned water, electric, and wastewater. (Most of the people here are on city utilities, although some people are on Pedernales or Bluebonnet electric.)

    When people can’t pay their utility bills, we offer them a two week delay. But we also give $120K to Community Action, to help pay people’s utility bills when they fall behind and can’t afford to catch up.

    This has been an ongoing topic of conversation:

    The problem is that most of the $120K we set aside for utility assistance isn’t getting used.  There’s a ton of need out there in the community, and we’re not getting the money to the people that need it.

    Why??

    Community Action gets money from us.  They also get grant money from the state and feds.  So they use that state and federal money first, and then only use the city money if that money’s not available.  That is good!

    The problem is that their application process is long and a giant pain in the butt, because they’re trying to give out federal money.  So people are being asked to provide all kinds of crazy paperwork documenting their employment or residence or whatever, and it takes weeks, and the person just needs their water turned back on so that they can cook dinner. This part is bad.

    …

    So the city is working on how to get the funds out faster.  Would any other organizations like to also hand out utility assistance?  (RFP means “Request for proposals”)

    No one wanted to apply!  They kept advertising and reaching out and extending the deadline. 

    Eventually they got three more applicants. Here’s what’s being recommended:

    The “donated funds” bit means that San Marcos residents have an option to donate when they pay their bill. There’s about $45K in accumulated donations right now.

    (Community Action spoke up on Tuesday and said their capacity is actually $30K, so that extra $10K will get re-distributed.)

    Discussion points:

    Question: How long will the turnaround time be for people needing assistance?

    Answer: Different agencies have estimated 3-5 days. Some a little longer. We’ll nail it down for sure in the contract with each agency.

    City Manager Stephanie Reyes proposes having a universal application that all the agencies could use for city funds. Everyone likes that.

    …

    There’s a lot of discussion about how customers can find out about utility assistance.

    • If your bill is overdue, you get an automatic robo-call on the 16th day.
    • On the 18th day, your bill is delinquent.
    • After that, the delinquency notice goes out.

    Right now, we don’t mention the utility assistance on the phone call or on the delinquency letter. The person has to call into the city first.

    Everyone wants to know, “Why don’t we tell people about the funds earlier?!”

    City Manager Stephanie Reyes says tactfully, “It hasn’t always been the philosophy of Council to make this information available at this stage.”

    What she means is this: Previous councils have been more obsessed with the random person who might cheat the system than they were with actually connecting people in need with assistance.

    This council – thank god – is more obsessed with connecting people to assistance. They want to have the utility assistance mentioned in the robo-call, and put in the delinquency letter.

    …

    Late Penalties and Reconnection Fees

    Suppose you can’t pay your utility bill. This would make it even harder:

    In other words, if you’re $140 behind on your utilities, it will cost almost $200 to get everything turned back on. This is pretty typical.

    Council looks at each of these individually.

    Penalty Fees: on average, people pay about $14 in penalties – a little higher for houses, a little lower for apartments.

    They debate capping it at different amounts – $10? $15? $20? – so that you’d pay either 10% or the cap, whichever is less. (This is Lorenzo’s suggestion.)

    (This is for residential, not commercial.)

    Reconnection Fees: This cost is based on a 2013 estimate of fuel plus labor to go to the house and turn it back on.

    Staff is planning on recalculating these fees and see if they can bring it down.

    …

    Question: If we did away with all fees altogether, how much would rates go up?

    Answer: about 0.5 %. Now, we always have rate increases, because costs go up. But if you want to do away with fees, we’ll need to tack on 0.5% on top of that.

    …

    Q: Can we change how many times they can get assistance per year?

    Answer: Right now it’s twice per year. It might be hard to track among different agencies.

    Most councilmembers want to change it to four.

    Bottom line: This will come up at a future council meeting, along with some of the answers to questions that Council asked tonight.

    …

    Workshop #2

    Update on American Rescue Plan dollars:

    A few programs have a little money leftover:

    Here’s where we want to re-allocate it:

    Alyssa fought long and hard for us to provide rental service, and to use an agency that doesn’t take weeks and weeks in turnaround time. (Same issue as with the utility assistance – federal money comes with a wild amount of paperwork.) It’s nice that this is now becoming the norm.

    Any further money that becomes available will also go to Rental Assistance.

    Bonus! 3 pm workshops, 2/4/25

    by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

    The first workshop was an update on the budget side of the CIP projects, which is kind of weedy and wonky, so I’m skipping that. But feel free to watch here.

    Workshop #2: Equity Cabinet

    Last summer, the city received a presentation from Dr. Rosalie Ray, at Texas State. She was proposing to run an equity cabinet on Transportation, and report back with her findings.

    So basically, DEI is hard to do well. It takes time, energy, funding, and expertise. An equity cabinet is one model that the research-folk like, as a way to do it well.

    Ours is studying transportation.

    Here’s what I got out of it: there’s a lot of expertise about transportation by city staff, and there’s a lot of lived experience by people who don’t have cars, out in the community.

    If you want to incorporate their experience into city policy, you need to do a lot of things:

    1. Give people rides to meetings and compensate them for their time. The whole point is to focus on people with barriers to participation, so you’d better address the barriers.
    2. Have the cabinet go into detail about what problems they face.
    3. Have city staff give the cabinet a rundown about how city planners organize and work on transportation issues.
    4. At this point, the cabinet has both sides of the equation: lived experience plus expertise. Then the cabinet members can really identify the sources of the problems and understand what it would take to solve them
    5. Eventually they arrive at a set of recommendations, which the city can then incorporate into their plans.

    That’s why it’s a big, drawn out process involving time, money, and energy! But it sounds like it went really well.

    First: You have to know exactly what you’re aiming for, if you want a concrete, productive conversation:

    The participants were giving the presentation, for what it’s worth.

    Here’s their experience:

    Life is really not easy in San Marcos, without a car. Like, Workforce Solutions that’s supposed to help you train and find a job, cover childcare, etc, is located way out on Posey Road.

    This is the participants incorporating the expertise of city planners into their understanding of San Marcos:

    So taking expertise plus lived experience together, they identified some key problems:

    Those are categories.

    Here’s their specific recommendations in each of those five categories:

    Again, it’s a great presentation, so feel free to go listen yourself here.

    Council had a few questions:

    Jane asks about sidewalk priorities and bus shelter status?
    Answer: We have 18 sheltered bus stops already. We want more, but we’re holding off because we’re about to re-do the Transportation Master Plan, and we don’t want to put something in that we immediately have to tear out.

    Amanda: Are other cities doing anything that we should start doing?
    Answer: Sometimes when there’s not enough space for a full shelter, they anchor two seats to the bust stop pole, with a little shade on top.

    As Amanda put it, these recommendations are all so feasible! There’s nothing impractical to any of this.

    There’s two big plans coming up: TXDOT is doing a transit plan, and the city is re-doing our transportation master plan. Both TXDOT and the city were involved in the Equity Cabinet, and want to incorporate the recommendations into their new plans. Hooray!

    Bonus! First 3 pm workshop, 1/21/25

    by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

    Workshop #1: Sessom Drive

    In 2018, we updated the Transportation Master Plan. We noted a bunch of dangerous intersections, and put in a bit about safe biking lanes.  Since then, you’ve seen all sorts of bike lanes pop up.  

    Academy and Sessom was flagged as one of the dangerous spots to improve.  This is the stretch we’re talking about:

    It’s always seemed super dangerous to me! Drivers are so zippy through this:

    wheeeee!

    Here’s what was done:

    Here’s a little before and after. Four skinny zippy, windy lanes, in 2021:

    I worry for all the bikers!

    After:

    A light, bike lanes, single lanes, a left turn lane: so much safer.

    Here’s another before-and-after:

    Hopefully bikers don’t feel like they’re going to be run over anymore!

    …

    Did it work? 

    Looks like it worked great! (“Level of Service” means how much traffic can you handle.)

    The bikers have concerns, though. What are “vertical delineators” that the cyclists want?

    These things.  You’ve seen them all over town.

    The city was trying out different kinds, and it seems like the armadillos work best.  (The other kinds require extra maintenance – they don’t pop back up after awhile, or they get torn off and leave bolts sticking up in the road, etc.  The armadillos are just glued down.)

    ….

    So this brings us to the next question!  We’re going to be improving Sessom down to Aquarena:

    We just completed the yellow part. We are about to work on the blue part to the right. We have some choices:

    1. Go back and undo the bike lanes and safety measures in the yellow part.
    2. Keep them, and extend them to the blue part.

    [Updated to add: I got this part wrong – there’s no option to extend the bike lanes to the new part. They’re just deciding on the yellow part, and if they should add armadillos. Also fixed below.]

    Jane Hughson reminisces about when they agreed to try bike lanes on the yellow part. (This was the very first meeting I blogged publicly, back in 2022!
    – Shane, Mark, and Saul all voted against the bike lanes on Sessom and Craddock. 
    – Jane, Alyssa, Jude and Max Baker all voted to try the bike lanes out.
    Jane was reluctant, but she decided since it’s just paint and easily reversible, we might as well try them out.)

    So what should we do?

    Undo the old bike lanes:  No one
    Keep the bike lanes and add armadillos: Everyone

    Hooray! That was a test, Council, and you passed. Good job.

    There’s one more workshop after this! Keep going!

    Bonus-bonus! Second 3 pm workshop, 1/21/25

    by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

    Workshop #2: San Marcos Water Supply.

    (I love this one so much.)

    Where do we get our water from?  

    Until 2000, San Marcos exclusively got Edwards Aquifer water. Then we signed on to get some surface water from Canyon Lake, and in the mid 2000s, we joined ARWA water.  (More on ARWA in a moment.)

    “MGD” means a million gallons of water per day.

    …

    What is ARWA?

    ARWA is kind of crazy.  Basically, in 2006,  San Marcos, Kyle, Buda, and the Canyon Regional Water Authority got together and tried to figure out a longterm plan. They formed ARWA, the Alliance Regional Water Authority.

    They decided to connect to the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer, which is over here:

    The crazy part is that this started in 2006, and they knew they wouldn’t be delivering water until 2023.  This was a very longterm plan! That is really good foresight by the councils that agreed to this.

    There was all sorts of infrastructure that had to be built. I think this is the whole project:

    So we’re getting all the water from the green oval on the far right. Then it has to be treated, at the blue dot, so that it’s drinkable. All those red lines are pipe that had to be laid down, and it gets run out to Lockhart, Buda, Kyle, San Marcos, and New Braunfels. That’s why it took so long.

    But now it’s here! This is great!

    ….

    So we’ve got all this water – Edwards, Canyon, and now ARWA.  Is it enough? 

    It depends! How many people are trying to use this water?

    This is the population projection, based on 2017 data:

    In other words, the black line is the projected population, and the red part is how much water we’d need. So in 2055, we’re expecting to have 140K people and need about 16K acre-feet of water each day. (An acre-foot means take an acre of land, and fill it with water that is 1 foot deep.)

    Here’s the water supply, according to when each of those sources kicked in:

    So this looks great! So in 2055, when we need 16K acre-feet of water, and we’ll have access to about 27K acre-feet of water. Through 2075, we’ve always got more water than we need.

    This is great!

    But then…. we had to update our projections.  Between 2017 and 2024, this region grew even more than expected. So we had to ramp up our projections, accordingly:

    So if we’ve got the same amount of water planned, but a ton more people, the graph now looks like this:

    Whoops. Now we are scheduled to run short on water in 2047.

    So what do we do?

    The good news is that we’ve got plenty of planning time, and we’re putting it to good use. There are basically two ways to address this:

    1. Find more water
    2. Use less water

    We’re going to do both.

    First, more water:

    Apparently Buda and Kyle are even shorter on water than we are. Everyone is interested in collaborating and shoring up supplies.  An ARWA Phase 3? Maybe a different source?

    Second, reduce water usage:

    The second two bullet points are huge: reclaiming used water. We’ve already got some reclaimed water already:

    (That slide is from a 2022 presentation, here.) All that purple is where we can send reclaimed water to. We currently have about 5.5 million gallons per day of reclaimed water.

    The problem is that it’s not drinkable. So you can use it to water the golf course at Kissing Tree (which they do!) but you can’t send it to people’s houses.

    The holy grail will be when we can get reclaimed water clean enough to drink. Then we can really ramp up our water re-use.

    (I read once that one of the grand failures of midcentury America was not double-piping all the houses, so that we weren’t mixing our toilet water with our sink water.  Then we wouldn’t be watering our lawns with drinking water, and we wouldn’t be trying to clean and re-use toilet water.)  

    Here’s what we think we can get to:

    Notice that the water supply hasn’t changed. But the red part – our water use – is smaller. The red part dips down again around 2050 because we think we’ll be able to get the reclaimed water clean enough to drink by then.

    What does Council say?

    Amanda asks if we have a problem with water leakage from pipes?
    Answer: We’re actually pretty good on this. It happens, but we’ve got one of the lowest rates in the state.

    Amanda: Can we get a graph of the top ten biggest water users?
    Answer: Yes! We don’t have it on hand, but we’ll email it to you.

    (I love this question. Amanda said she’ll send the graph over when she gets it, but she hasn’t gotten it yet.)

    Amanda: Do we still do rebates for rain barrels?
    Answer: Yes! Details here.

    The City Manager Stephanie Reyes also mentions this: San Marcos water rates are a little higher than those around us, but it’s because of all this advance planning. We are in a much more secure longterm position that most others.