Category: Hour summaries

Hours 0:00-2:04, 5/2/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen Comment:

  • Landlords are mad about the Eviction Delay still being in effect.
  • Community members rooting for good SMART re-negotiations

Both of these will come up tonight.

Item 1: Presentation on Meet and Confer negotiations

Background: After the whole mess leading up to Ryan Hartman’s termination, Mano Amiga called for five police reforms. The city negotiated the new SMPD contract and ignored the five reforms. So Mano Amiga circulated a petition to overturn the contract. Legally, City Council had two choices: either re-open the contract, or let the voters decide. Council decided to renegotiate the contract. The negotiation process is called Meet and Confer.

So, We Meet (and confer) Again

Here are the five Hartman Reforms from Mano Amiga:

via Mano Amiga’s FB page

City staff has met and conferred with SMPOA. They have a new contract they are proposing. At this past Tuesday’s Council meeting, there’s a presentation on the new contract. Then City Council will vote to adopt (or not) the new contract on May 16th. (They will definitely vote to adopt.)

Here’s the short version:

  1. End the 180 Day Rule: “We’re already doing the compromise position!”
  2. End Delay of Interview Rule: “No.”
  3. Public Transparency: “I’m pretending my hands are tied, legally. But we will incorporate reprimands into promotions.”
  4. End 3rd party arbitration: “We’ll tighten up a few situations where the 3rd party can’t overrule us.”
  5. End Vacation Forfeiture: “No.”

City Manager Stephanie Reyes made a point to say that Chief Standridge was not part of the negotiation team, because it would put him in such an awkward position. He was only there as a neutral resource. (Who all actually was doing the negotiations? I couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t on the agendas of the Meet and Confer meetings. I watched a little bit of the videos – April 7, April 19, April 23 – but didn’t see any introductions, and I could only recognize Stephanie Reyes. There are no documents besides the presentation in the packet. So I have no idea.)

It’s a weird situation, where the police union (SMPOA) is on one side, and city staff are supposed to be on the other side, advocating for these five reforms on behalf of Mano Amiga that they don’t necessarily believe in.  So it’s mildly amazing that they moved the needle at all.

In other words, my expectations were low, and they successfully cleared my low expectations.

The main presentation

I found myself getting pretty mad, listening to Chief Standridge. We’re going to unpack what he said, but there’s a couple main themes:

  • He acts deliberately obtuse about the reason activists are requesting a reform.  “Why on earth would you not want to support our valiant officers?”
  • He is mushy about the difference between holding an employee accountable in their job, and someone’s legal rights in a criminal investigation.  These are very different things, but he switches back and forth as if they’re the same.
  • He acts like something is legally forbidden, when he means “Well, we have the power to change the law in these negotiations. But until we do, it’s forbidden!”

He organizes his presentation according to the five Hartman reforms, so I’m going to do the same here.  

So here we go.

  1. The 180 Day Rule:

What Mano Amiga says about it:

What Chief Standridge says about it:  

Before San Marcos negotiates a contract, there are some background Texas laws in effect.  These are the Civil Service laws.  If an officer does something wrong, Chief Standridge has 180 days to investigate, meet with all parties, and dispose of an investigation.

Last summer’s Meet and Confer agreement made it stronger.  Now Chief Standridge has 180 days to file a complaint, and then another 180 days from the complaint to carry out the investigation and draw a conclusion or punishment or whatever.  

Standridge gives some other contexts:

  • If it’s not a criminal offense, the 180 day clock starts running at the incident. If it’s criminal, the 180 day clock starts running when the crime is discovered.
  • Federal law mandates 300 days statute of limitations for sexual harassment
  • Statute of limitations for misdemeanors is 2 years, for run-of-the-mill felonies is 3 years.

Mano Amiga wants to end the statute of limitations altogether. 

Standridge’s argument against this is basically:

  • That’s absurd!  The statute of limitations for most crimes is only 2-3 years!
  • It’s really hard to get good evidence as more time passes!  For example, a lot of video footage auto-rewrites every 30 days or so.  It’s hard to collect old evidence. “An unlimited time span is unreasonable if we believe in evidence.”

This is Chief Standridge at his worst.  He’s completely ducking the issue.  The issue – which he is well-aware of – is that nationally, we have a big problem with police department protecting abusive cops and shielding them from investigations. One good way to do this is to circle the wagons and run out the statute of limitations. Then shrug your shoulders and say, “oops! Too late to do anything!” 

Does SMPD do this? Clearly Chief Standridge thinks not. I genuinely have no idea.  But Chief Standridge is being a jerk by not acknowledging that this is a broader problem among police departments in general.

The next thing that Standridge is doing is switching back and forth between the employment rules for police officers versus the actual law for civilians during a criminal investigation.  When it comes to employment rules, there’s no statute of limitations at your job.  Your boss can pull you in and say, “Wait a minute. What were you doing back in 2017?”  It doesn’t mean that your boss can file criminal charges against you, but they can certainly open an investigation with HR.

The fact that the statute of limitations is 2 years for misdemeanors and 3 years for low-key felonies is 100% irrelevant.  Who cares, Chief. You’re their boss.  If you have a bad cop and something comes to light from 2019, don’t you want the option of looking into it?

Which brings me to my final point: some crimes have no evidence, and it’s just the end of the road.  If the incident was a year ago and there’s no evidence, then you’ve done what you can do. End of matter.  Why do you need to decide preemptively that all crimes from a year ago have no merit? None of them could possibly be investigated? Even if someone was deliberately obfuscating and hiding the matter?

Outcome: nothing changed.

Hartman Reform #2. 48 hour delay of interviews and video review.

Here’s what Mano Amiga says:

Here’s what Chief Standridge says: 

Suppose an officer is accused of misconduct. That officer is given 48 hours advance notice and shown the video before they are interviewed.  Community members are not.  You may think this is unfair towards community members, but it’s actually unfair in the opposite way!  It’s unfair for officers, because they can’t plead the 5th like you can. You’re allowed to ask for a lawyer before you talk to the cops.  The officer is forced to give a statement and answer questions by Internal Affairs.  They can be fired if they don’t cooperate!

Again, Chief Standridge is drawing a false equivalence, and it’s bullshit:  if you’re being hauled in for questioning, you’re a civilian being questioned by the cops. You’re entitled to rights under the constitution.  Whereas if the cop is hauled into Internal Affairs, he’s an employee being questioned by his job. That is not a criminal investigation.

Chief Standridge almost acknowledges this, because he cites Garrity, which is a court decision that says that a cop’s compelled testimony for Internal Affairs can’t be used in a criminal proceeding.  In other words, everything is completely fair:

  • You can be forced to talk to your boss at work, but you can’t be forced to talk to the cops in a criminal investigation.
  • A cop can be forced to talk to Internal Affairs at their job, but that testimony can’t be used against the cop in a criminal investigation.

Nothing of substance was said regarding the 48 hour delay. It was just glossed over.

Then Chief Standridge talks about why officers are allowed to watch the video before they testify: studies prove that it improves officer recall by 11% when they watch the video before they testify! Isn’t that amazing? 

It is a wild misreading of the situation.  He is literally explaining the point that watching a video helps you remember what happened.  No shit, Sherlock.  That’s not the issue.

The issue – just to be painfully explicit here – is that watching the video allows a cop to get their story straight.  Does the video show you planting evidence? Did the video catch something that makes you look bad? Wouldn’t you like time to prepare for that? 

If we take Chief Standridge at his word – that he literally believes that showing someone a video is best practices because it improves their memory – then he ought to extend that practice to community members.  Everyone should get to watch the video! If you haul in a burglary suspect, you should show them the grainy ambiguous video footage before asking them any questions.  It might help jog their memory.  RIGHT CHIEF? BEST PRACTICES!  

This would have been a respectable answer from Chief Standridge: 

“Eye witness testimony is notoriously inaccurate. Showing a video to a witness has pros and cons.  It can solidify someone’s memory of what happened, but it also reveals to someone the extent of what the investigator knows.  If a person has nothing to hide, it helps them give better testimony. If a person does have something to hide, then it allows them to sharpen what they hide in the testimony.”

But that is not what he said.

Outcome: nothing changed.

Hartman Reform #3: Transparency

Here’s what Mano Amiga wants:

(I know, Chief Standridge went out of order. This is 3rd in his presentation, even though Mano Amiga’s graphic has a 4. Ignore it.)

Here’s what Chief Standridge says:

By law, there are two files on every cop, an “A” file and a “G” file.

The A File:
– Anything good that happens to the officer (a commendation, congratulation, or honor)
– Any misconduct that ended in a suspension, firing, or demotion
– Regular formal evaluations

The G File:
– Soft things, like coaching and mentoring and job improvement things. Letters of reprimand go here.

Here’s what the Austin Chronicle says about it:

The G files contain complaints by citizens, testimony from fellow officers, body-cam video, written reprimands and memos, and other details that justice advocates think should be accessible to the public.

Chief Standridge tells us that legally, he can’t release anything in the G file.  His hands are tied.

But he’s misrepresenting the situation (and by this point I’m pretty irritated with his whole presentation). Here’s the thing: It’s illegal under Civil Service Laws, yes. But Meet and Confer contracts override Civil Service laws. So it’s only illegal until we pass a contract that says we want the G file released.

This exact issue is currently being debated in Austin:

Subsection (g) applies to Texas municipalities whose police officers (or firefighters) are civil service employees – that is, ones that don’t have unions that negotiate the terms of officers’ employment. Here, the city and the Austin Police Association, through what’s called the “meet-and-confer” process, do hash out a contract that could preempt Subsection (g) should the parties so agree. Both APD and APA leadership insist the G file must remain secret – that it will contain frivolous accusations that officers can’t defend themselves against, particularly under Austin’s current procedures that allow such claims to be made anonymously. However, during this year’s negotiations for a new police contract, the city’s Labor Relations Office is proposing to do away with G files. 

In other words: It’s only illegal until your meet-and-confer agreement overrides it.  Let’s file the G File in the Chief-Is–Misleading-the-Public File. (Or the circular file.)

(In fact, this is part of what Austin is voting on, on Saturday:

And it passed! Unfortunately, San Antonio’s Prop A, also including some police reform, did not pass.)

Anyway! Chief Standridge says that they found a compromise position: G-files and reprimands should play a bigger role in promotions. Or rather, if you’ve got a bunch of reprimands, you’ll get “negative points” and won’t be able to earn a big promotion quite so fast.

Kinda shocking that this wasn’t already happening, but better late than never!

Outcome: Letters of reprimand and suspension will be included in the promotion process.

Hartman Reform #4: End 3rd Party Arbitration

What Mano Amiga says:

(I know, still out of order. It’s the least of our worries.)

Here’s what Chief Standridge says:

Suppose an officer gets in trouble. There are three kinds of discipline:
– you get fired,
– you get suspended, or
– you get demoted. 

If one of those happens and the officer doesn’t like it, they have two options:

  1. Civil Service Commission
    Three commissioners hear the appeals. I think they’re local citizens
  2. Hearing Examiner hears the appeals. This is 3rd party arbitration.

What I remember from back in January is Karen Muñoz saying that 3rd party arbitration almost always lightens the discipline, and that arbiters have a motivation to stake out a middle position. 

Here’s where Standridge ticked me off in this one: he goes back to Ryan Hartman and says, “Now, Ryan Hartman appealed his discipline to a Hearing Examiner, and the Hearing Examiner upheld the punishment. We prevailed! The system worked! So why would we want to change something that works?!!”

In other words: these dumb, irrational activists! They don’t even realize that their poster child Ryan Hartman was such a shitheel that even the arbiter upheld his punishment! Aren’t they silly? 

Okay, you got me? I’m glad that Hartman wasn’t let off with a lighter sentence? Woo-hoo? Now what about the rest of the cases, where they do get a lighter sentence from the arbiter?  

Anyway: there’s something called a Dishonorable Discharge on an F5. This means you got fired for criminal conduct, lying, or insubordination.

Standridge proposes using that as a standard:  if the appeal is filed for one of those three things – criminal conduct, lying, or insubordination – then the arbiter can’t overturn the chief’s judgment.

Standridge also says this is very progressive. It would be 1st in Texas! Unfortunately I’m too irked by this point to celebrate.

Outcome: Unless there’s evidence that the Chief is violating some ethical conditions, the arbiter can’t override the Chief’s punishment in the most serious cases.

Hartman Reform #5: Vacation Forfeiture.

Mano Amiga: 

Using your vacation allow you to avoid a “break of services for promotion”.

Chief Standridge: “I’ll do a pros and cons list.”

Pros of vacation forfeiture :
– We avoid a costly appeals process, because they admit wrongdoing.
– It helps with understaffing because we’re not down yet another police officer
– They still lose those hours of pay, and we don’t have to pay overtime to someone else, so it’s cheaper for us

So it’s a huge win!

Cons: he never got around to this part. (In fact, even in the slide presentation there’s a “pros” slide but no “cons” slide.)

He says the vacation forfeiture will show up on your G-file. So since G-files are now being used in promotions, it will show up there.

Outcome: Double-dipping on the G-file outcome again. Gets used in promotions.

Thus concludes his presentation.  

……

There are some outcomes that didn’t show up in my recap above. Here is the full list:

We only discussed bullet points 1, 2, and 5. (And the 5th really isn’t a change.) The 3rd bullet – streaming future meet-and-confer meetings – is a good thing.

So the last bullet: why did SMPOA agree to this? What’s the carrot in it for them?

They make more money. Which, fine.

Both City Manager Stephanie Reyes and Chief Stan chime in about the violent crime rate some more, and their desire to focus on other things beyond this contract. The end!

The Council Discussion

Alyssa asks if the Chief could explain about Ryan Hartman and vacation forfeiture.

Chief Standridge’s answer:

Hartman’s situation is totally different than what’s being discussed here.  In the contract, we’re talking about suspension.  You can substitute vacation time for suspension. 

“Administative leave” is a totally different thing, which means “we don’t trust you with a gun and a badge right now”.  Hartman was placed on administrative leave for six months.

…

One moment that I want to highlight:

Chief Standridge gives a very sincere statement on the early part of the Hartman investigation.  It wasn’t exactly an apology, but he did show remorse. It was something like, “The early part of the investigation did not live up to SMPD standards.  We’re not going to look in the rearview, we’re going to look through the front windshield and move forward, and moving forward, we’ll have higher standards.”

It’s not exactly groveling for forgiveness, but he delivered it with sincerity and I believed him.

…

So what did the rest of Council say?

Jude Prather: This will make us safer!

Mark Gleason: Let’s move on! (And he uses the phrase “so-called Criminal Justice Movement”.  I use the phrase “rolling my eyes at him”.)

Saul Gonzalez: Thank you thank you! Win-win. My son is a cop.

Matthew Mendoza: I have faith in this new agreement.

Alyssa Garza: Staff devoted a lot of time.  Improvements have been made. It took a ton of work from our neighbors.  Town Halls and conversations would help.

Jane Hughson: Thank you to everyone. Everyone worked hard to come up with an agreement that everyone likes.

….

Bottom line: This contract has some legitimate improvements to it. I think the Chief’s presentation was cagey and semi-deceptive, but there are actual improvements to the contract.

There is also still a lot left to fight for!

So there you have it. It will be signed on May 16th and that will be that.

….

Two final notes

1. There was a funny moment at the beginning when Chief Standridge says, “I want to dispel any rumors. I’m not going anywhere. We’ve bought a house here. Abilene is our home.”

Then he waits a couple beats and says, “I just said Abilene, didn’t I. SAN MARCOS! San Marcos is our home!” It was pretty funny.

2. Chief Standridge goes off on a tangent at 1:14 that is very confusing. He seems to think that the activists are being hypocritical by simultaneously believing two things:
– there’s a lot of police misconduct
– there’s no accountability

Standridge believes these contradict each other. You can’t have a lot of police misconduct and no accountability!

Here’s his reasoning: the public doesn’t find out about misconduct until the police department makes it available. Therefore, any time you hear about police misconduct, you’re also seeing evidence of accountability. If there was no accountability, the misconduct would all be invisible. Ta-da!

This is idiotic, of course. Misconduct is not invisible. People seem to notice when they were tazed, or searched, or intimidated, or stopped and harassed, even if the police try to hide and suppress it. Gossip spreads, reputations get formed.

It’s possible that Chief Standridge really does open an honest investigation into every complaint he hears about. But he’s naive if he believes he hears a complaint about every incident that occurs.

Hours 2:04-2:58, 5/2/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries, Uncategorized

Item 10: McCoy’s new headquarters:

This has come up before.  They’re building a fancy new campus here:

Those two red highlighter marks are future roads, according to the Transportation Master Plan.

But if McCoy’s wants their campus, the roads are in the way.

So the hypothetical roads must go.  DONE!

(The vote was unanimous and this really isn’t a very big deal.)

…

Item 11:  67 acres here:

They want to turn it into apartments that feel like houses.  It will be a complex, with the clubhouse and pool and all of that kind of stuff, but each apartment is a standalone house.  I went hunting on the company’s website but I couldn’t find a sample photo.

The part I found mildly delusional was that they expect wealthy renters.  Their typical renter has an $85K annual salary and wants a multi-year lease.   That sounds like a pleasant fantasy version of San Marcos.  

Shall we play The Six Criteria For Housing Developments game? YES!

Price Tag to the City: Will it bring in taxes that pay for itself, over the lifespan of the infrastructure and future repair? How much will it cost to extend roads, utilities, on fire and police coverage, on water and wastewater?

Good location.  This is infill.

Housing stock: How long will it take to build? How much housing will it provide? What is the forecasted housing deficit at that point? Is it targeting a price-point that serves what San Marcos needs?

We need an ongoing housing needs assessment.  We need to know this.

Environment: Is it on the aquifer? Is it in a flood zone? Will it create run off into the river?Are we looking at sprawl? Is it uniformly single-family homes?

Not on the aquifer.  Environmentally reasonable.

While I haven’t seen photos, I get the picture that the units have smaller yards than a house. So denser than single family housing, but less dense than apartments. Not the worst.

Social: Is it meaningfully mixed income? Is it near existing SMCISD schools and amenities?

I can’t imagine their target clientele is going to materialize. They’re imagining something wealthy-ish, though, which is not mixed income.  It’s sort of near Hernandez and Rodriguez elementary school, and sort of near Miller middle school.  (The developer is imagining adults without kids, though.)

The San Marxist Special: Is it a mixed-income blend of single family houses, four-plexes, and eight-plexes, all mixed together? With schools, shops, restaurants, and public community space sprinkled throughout?

Not really. I suppose you have the outlet mall right there, but they’re not exactly a charming little public gathering space. 

(Remember when you used to be able to ride a gondola back and forth for about 100 yards? Good times.

via

I never actually got to ride the silly thing.)

My overall opinion: This is a reasonably good use of space. It’s hard to put housing in between I-35 and some railroad tracks.

The vote:
Yes: everyone except Matthew Mendoza
No: Matthew Mendoza

I am not sure what he was opposed to!

…

Item 12: 169 acres at the end of the airport:

It’s got a weird cut out due to an airport runway easement, and there are some FAA height restrictions also because of the runway. The developer wants it zoned Light Industrial.

Max Baker spoke during the public hearing, and raised issues of pollution. He kept mentioning the future airport expansion.  I don’t think this particular item is the airport expansion? But maybe it’s in the pipeline?

Anyway, apparently it’s easy to measure pollution, but hard to determine the source, and usually it’s vehicle traffic.  (Maybe we should reconsider all this sprawl!)

The vote:
Yes: Matthew Mendoza, Jude Prather, Shane Scott, Mark Gleason, Jane Hughson
No: Alyssa Garza, Saul Gonzales

One last thing:

You can speak during the public hearing, but not during council discussion, unless a council member specifically calls you up to the podium to answer a question.

Which brings me to my favorite moment of the night:  Alyssa Garza saying – very deadpan but not mean – “Is it possible for Mr. Baker to tell us what he has ants in his pants about?” I’ve been laughing about that ever since.

(Max was glad to comply, and went to the podium to talk further about CAPCOG and purple machines and air quality.)

Hours 2:58-4:37, 5/2/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 14: The ever-loving SMART Terminal.

(Background here, here, here, and here.)

The development agreement has been opened back up! Cue angels singing. 

First order of business: who is going to do the actual renegotiating with Franklin Mountain?  

  1. Staff?
  2. A subcommittee of council?
  3. The entire council?

If you picked 1, then you agree with Jude Prather, Shane Scott, Mark Gleason, and Mayor Hughson.

If you picked 2 or 3, you have the company of Alyssa Garza, Matthew Mendoza, and Saul Gonzalez.  

So option 1 wins, and it will go back to staff to renegotiate things.  

Alyssa Garza brings up the issue of dialogue: the community has been asking for a back-and-forth conversation. They’re not getting it.  Jane Hughson points out that council has heard hours of comments from the community, and she had a three hour conversation with three of the community members.  I kinda see where both sides are coming from.

Straight talk: do community members really want dialogue? No, they want the SMART Terminal to be cancelled. But they’ll settle for dialogue because they suspect they’re going to lose the war, the moment they stop talking. If they truly believed that a majority of council was fighting hard for their interests and was willing to cancel the whole SMARTGASBORG, then I bet community members would feel comfortable relinquishing control.

Dialogue without changing the outcome is infuriating.  No dialogue, but a responsive government who shuts down the whole SMART boondoggle would be fine. Dialogue is important, but I kinda agree that there’s not a whole lot of team-building to be done here.

Next order of business: which issues should be renegotiated by staff?  

The planning director, Amanda Hernandez, gave a quick presentation.  They amalgamated the 12 concerns from the community (that I posted here last time), along with an email from Ed Theriot and one from Virgina Parker.   In addition, the emails were all included in the packet.

However: you know whose email wasn’t included in the packet?  MINE.  Since they had specifically invited the community to email any additional suggestions, I sent one in about labor practices, and specifically indexing the minimum wage to inflation. 

And….<crickets>.  So city staff: I hope you feel the mighty burn of my stink-eye, aimed in your general direction, from the safety of my own living room.

(Jane even asked, “Is that everything that was sent in?” And still they suppressed my wee little marxist voice! For shame.)

Matthew Mendoza proposes that we send all the issues to the negotiating table, and see where it lands. Everybody seems on board with that.

…

Item 14: Coming up in future discussions:

Car boots.  Apparently we bought a bunch in the 90s and never used them, in part because we needed a court order to do so.

They’re going to discuss a policy where you can get booted if you have three unpaid parking tickets. 

The idea is not to be punitive. In order to get the boot off, all you need to do is get in touch with the city and come up with a payment plan. 

Item 17:  Eviction Delay:  Currently we have a 3 month eviction delay.  This is still under the auspices of the Covid Emergency Declaration, which is still in effect.

There’s a couple things going on:

  1. Some landlords are ignoring the delay and illegally evicting tenants early.
  2. Some renters are intentionally skipping out on the last three months of rent, knowing they can’t be evicted
  3. Rents are insanely high in San Marcos, especially with regard to the median income

So there’s bad circumstances all around, plus some bad actors on both sides.

Alyssa is very concerned that we will not be able to properly notify community members that the extension is coming to an end.  This is grounded! We’re really terrible about outreach. Or rather, outreach is incredibly hard to do well.

Mayor Hughson puts a call out for media outlets to help spread the word.  I GOT YOU, MAYOR HUGHSON!   From your lips to my ear!  I’m doing it!

There are a lot of details to hammer out, but expect to see it end around July 1st. 

Hours 0:00-4:50

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Items 6/7: The dreaded SMART Terminal

If you’re new here: Giant industrial park going up for zoning, out towards Martindale. Everyone very mad. Read the whole sordid backstory here.

Here’s the basic sketch of what happened Tuesday night:

  • A ton of community members showed up in and drowned council in a mountain of information, concerns, data, suggestions, and so on.
  • Council got the message loud and clear.
  • Council is going to revisit the Development Agreement
  • Then they’ll revisit the zoning in July.

Just a passing thought: these community members with these careful, well-researched, passionate statements to council? perhaps would make really great progressive potential future candidates for public office!

I’m just putting this out in the universe. Granted, a lot of the speakers live outside city limits, but maybe they were just annexed on Tuesday.

The City Staff presentation:

There was a small bit of new information given on Tuesday from the city:

(Crappy quality because it was not in the packet, so I had to screenshot.)

This fiscal analysis is supposed to happen before every annexation. I can’t remember ever seeing one of these before, and there have been a lot of small annexations. What happened here is that the community members noticed and spoke up repeatedly about it. In response, city staff put this together.

However, Noah Brock (one of the community members) independently did his own revenue estimate, using Amazon Warehouse tax revenue rates as a model. His estimates:

  • Year 5: $1.4 million annually
  • Year 10: $4.3 million annually
  • Year 20: $8.1 million annually

The city’s estimates favor the developer, and Noah’s is less rosy. Draw your own conclusions.

(You know what I’d LOVE to see? The fiscal projections from the Amazon warehouse in 2016, or the Outlet Malls, or Embassy Suites, and how those have panned out. I’m sure they’re sitting in some prospectus, aging like milk. I found the Chapter 380 agreement for Amazon, but not the fiscal projections, which leads me to suspect it was never made public.*)

Seeing the writing on the wall, the developer made some small concessions in the days leading up to the meeting:

  • Double the buffer zone required by San Marcos code (around creeks I think?)
  • They will only pile shipping containers 80 feet high in certain areas (in the yellow circle below)
  • At the purple arrows, they’ll put a 100 foot buffer between the SMART Terminal and residential homes.

100 feet is tiny. A typical house sits on 1/5th of an acre. If that lot is square, it’s roughly 92’x92′. I’ve probably made you read 100 feet of my blathering already, and it’s only Sunday morning.

The idea that these two concessions would mollify the community is pretty arrogant. This developer keeps rubbing me the wrong way.

(Who is this developer anyway? Two of the community members filled us in: Franklin Mountain is an investment conglomeration owned by Paul Foster, an oil baron who is the current chair of ERCOT and part of lots of GOP committees, boards, etc.)

What do community members want?

At P&Z, the question was “If we turn this down, will the developer build in the county, with zero environmental protections?” San Marcos River Foundation director Virginia Parker thinks this is definite. However, this is a convenient threat that developers levy all the time, to spook communities into concessions. Maybe both can be true.

Either way, the SMART Terminal fight has morphed. Community members probably still wish it could be shut down altogether, but they recognize that that ship has sailed. On Tuesday, the conversation was no longer about whether it’ll happen, but instead about how to mitigate the damage. They’re fighting for the least-bad option now.

Seven of the community members (Noah Brock, Annie Donnovan, Ana Juarez, Ramona Brown, Ezra Reynolds, Bruce Jennings, and Rocco Moses) put together this list of recommended changes:

To the list above, I’d add:

13. Labor Protections

We keep being told that the point of the SMART Terminal is:

  1. to increase tax revenue without raising property taxes
  2. to bring good jobs to the community.

There needs to be some labor protections in the development agreement. Otherwise you will get shitty, exploitative jobs.

In 2016, we passed an amendment that any company receiving money from San Marcos should pay minimum $15/hour, plus benefits. This is a good start, but there’s one crucial detail missing: it must be pegged to inflation. You should never set a safety net without planning for inflation-adjustment.

(Honestly, this is one of the most underappreciated near-misses of federal policy of the 20th century: not pegging the minimum wage to inflation.)

Other labor protections: regular schedules with advance notice, no drug testing, and there’s a bunch more here. But mandating that the minimum wage keep up with inflation would be a good start!

Other recommendations: Ed Theriot is a local developer who is usually trying to build the things that make neighbors mad. But this time he’s the neighbor, and also one of the Caldwell County Commissioners, to boot. So his perspective is particularly useful.

However, I don’t have his recs yet. He’s writing up a list of recommended changes to the Development Agreement, and I’ll include it here when he sends it to me.

One more thing:

There was one more very interesting thing in Citizen Comment, which doesn’t fit neatly anywhere. Bruce Jennings offered the following history of the land next to Gary Job Corp:

Let me tell you a story about the land you are about to annex. The area in question has significant history of prior pollution. Some of you may be old enough to recall that the airport and the Gary Job Corp property was Camp Gary, a military installation from 1942 to 1956. Now, one of the duties of the base was aircraft maintenance; engines had to be maintained, parts cleaned, fluids changed, detergents, oils, and degreasers disposed of. But in the 40’s and 50’s few knew about the potential of pollution. Camp Gary personnel dumped these chemicals into a landfill and creek at the back of the property…for years.

Those fluids ran downstream to a earthen detention pond before entering the San Marcos river, where they settled as heavy metals on the bottom of that pond. Later, in the 1970’s and 80’s most people had forgotten and the land was developed for residential use. People started fishing for bait in the pond fed by 2 creeks and springs from the hillside. One day I was approached by an elderly gentleman who told those fishing to NEVER eat what they catch in that pond. I was alarmed to say the least, and began to look for information.

We had city, county, state, and federal representatives on site multiple times. It was suggested that the property be identified as a superfund clean up site. Jake Pickle came out one day and walked the property with us.

The price tag for cleanup in 1981 was 5 million dollars. Options were discussed and a decision was made…to leave the contaminants in the soil. The contaminants were left under a 12 foot cap of mud.  And instead, let’s improve the sewage treatment and close the landfill that followed, by the ownership of San Marcos, who owned the landfill out on the back end of Camp Gary.  Where 69% of it was on two lots, where Camp Gary became Gary Job Corp.  That cost about 1 million dollars. So if I remember correctly, you all had to build about 10 test wells out there, and run them for several years!  

Now, at the time, the southeast part of the  property, where the San Marcos Municipal Landfill was, encompassed an area of approximately 353 acres, of which two Gary Job Corps Center tracts comprise about 69 percent. Hazardous chemicals found included volatile organic compounds (VOCs), polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB), cadmium (Cd), iron (Fe), Ph, and manganese (Mn). Now these chemicals are in the soil out there.

If you do allow the cut and fill, you need to be testing the soil every time you penetrate for a slab out there, because what I understand is that you will be releasing PCBs that have been trapped in the compressed soil, and it will be leaching in the soil and then therefore go into the shallow water system that transfers through those creeks. I know this for a fact because I live two miles from that old landfill, and the pond at the beginning of my street is horribly contaminated! And y’all didn’t want to clean it up. Y’all wanted to just have a cap on it, and y’all went and did improvements over at Camp Gary, did your test wells for several years, y’all came and did tests at my pond for two full years. That shallow water feeds the creeks and the rivers. Any destruction of the soil could release the chemicals that were stored in the soil as hazardous chemicals. There would be a detriment to all of the flow of the water that seeps into and nourishes the river.

(That’s an amalgamation of his spoken and written comments, which he was kind enough to email to me.)

Here is the punchline, an environmental assessment on the land, prepared for the Department of Labor:

The San Marcos Municipal Landfill was once listed as a Texas Superfund Site in Reedville, Texas with the EPA Site # TXD980625222 (USEPA 2021). The landfill is not listed on the National Priorities List (NPL). It is currently registered as an Archived Superfund site by the USEPA (Homefacts.com 2021).

(Link and quote also from Bruce’s email.)

Just think, our very own Archived Superfund Site!  With hard work and a fair wind, we could really double down on the legacy of environmental damage here.

Last thoughts:

The point of city planning is to share decision-making with the residents of the city. Developments affect residents, so residents ought to have some decision-making power over what gets built where.

We are giving away our power. Franklin Mountain isn’t an industry, it’s a middle man. They want the power to decide what gets built there.

The SMART Terminal is phenomenally big:

Decision-making power is worth a lot of money on something that big. Franklin Mountain would like to make a lot of money, and so they are working very hard to wrest it from us.

The decision-making power will go to this middle man company. (Specifically, a company owned by a rich oil baron named Paul Foster, as mentioned above.) Then they will hold the power, and they’ll get to decide what happens there, and we’ll be stuck with it.

…

*On the Amazon Chapter 380 agreement, the lack of concrete details is amazing. Here’s the hilariously useless Official Payment Plan:

Have you ever seen an amortization schedule without any, y’know, numbers? Or even percents? Just “yes” or “no”? Me neither.

Hours 4:50-5:25, 4/18/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

The SMART Terminal took almost 5 hours of a 5 1/2 hour meeting. So what else was there?

Items 8 and 9:  Zoning a chunk next to the high school:

Literally adjacent to the high school. It’s going to be apartments.  

Just because it’s been awhile, let’s walk through our criterion for evaluating residential zoning:

Price Tag to the City: Will it bring in taxes that pay for itself, over the lifespan of the infrastructure and future repair? How much will it cost to extend roads, utilities, on fire and police coverage, on water and wastewater?

Great location.  Fully covered in terms of infrastructure and services.

Housing stock: How long will it take to build? How much housing will it provide? What is the forecasted housing deficit at that point? Is it targeting a price-point that serves what San Marcos needs?

Probably? Sure would be nice if we had an ongoing housing needs assessment!

Environment: Is it on the aquifer? Is it in a flood zone? Will it create run off into the river?Are we looking at sprawl? Is it uniformly single-family homes?

Not on the aquifer.  Environmentally reasonable.

Social: Is it meaningfully mixed income? Is it near existing SMCISD schools and amenities?

Not mixed income.  That’s the only drawback: I want to intersperse people from all different economic levels.  But couldn’t be closer to SMCISD! 

The San Marxist Special: Is it a mixed-income blend of single family houses, four-plexes, and eight-plexes, all mixed together? With schools, shops, restaurants, and public community space sprinkled throughout?

Nope. It never is. Bummer.

Overall, this is a reasonably good thing to build here.

Items 12-13: we need some equipment.

Specifically, we are leasing (1) 41′ Digger Derrick-Tracked Backyard, five (5) Ford F350 Supervisor Trucks, two (2) 47′ Digger Derricks (DC47), one (1) AM55 Overcenter Aerial Device, four (4) Articulating Telescopic Aerial Devices (AT41M), for the Electric-Utilities department.

via

Those look like fun.

Item 15: Carports. 

Saul Gonzales brought this item up for discussion:

via

Apparently, carports are mostly not allowed in San Marcos.

The problem is setbacks:

from the San Marcos Land Development Code.

As one of these Odes to Enshrined Sprawl, you can’t build too close to the edge of your property. The size of your setback varies, depending on your zoning.

You are allowed to park your car in your setback, but you can’t put a structure in it. So where does that leave carports? Carports count as a structure that’s not allowed in your setback zone, even though they house your car. So unless your yard is huge, you probably don’t have room for a carport.

So why? What’s so bad about a carport?

First off, setbacks are different from easements and right-of-ways. Easements and right-of-ways are needed for water lines and future sidewalks and things like that. You definitely can’t put structures up over those.

So what’s the reason for banning carports in the setbacks?

The polite version is “neighborhood character”. The blunt version is that people who care about status think they look trashy.

(Do I think they look trashy? No! They’re fine! Protect your cars from the hail. Who cares.)

Mark Gleason phrases it as, “Some neighborhoods are going to hate carports, while they’re fine in other neighborhoods.” Can’t argue with that. HOAs are the worst!

Bottom line: this will get discussed in the future. If you want a carport, try to live in the right kind of neighborhood.

Hours 0:00-2:03, 4/4/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Onto the actual meeting!

Citizen comment: Mostly community members talking about the SMART Terminal. None of us can stop talking about it! But I think I should go on to other topics.

Items 1-4: Quarterly financial reports and audits and investment reports, etc.

Everything looks fine.

Item 14: East McCarty and Leah.

Developers want to make something of this land:

That yellow L-shape.

This item first came up last summer. The developer applied for Heavy Commercial zoning. P&Z said yes, and then Council said no. Council was concerned about Embassy Suites and the conference center, our beautiful prized jewel of the city. (Which the city is still paying off for another 10+ years or something, by the way.)

In November, the developer applied for Light Industrial. This time, P&Z denied it.  That means that it will take 6 votes at council to override P&Z.

So it went to Council in December. Rather than deny it, they formed a committee to try to work something out with the developer.  And now the committee is done, and it’s back for the vote.

The committee and the developer made a lot of compromises, but they got stuck on one thing: nighttime truck traffic.  Council wants Quiet Hours after 10 pm, because of the people sleeping at Embassy Suites. The developer was saying it’s too restrictive for their business model, because warehouses need to load and unload their wares overnight. Council pointed out that it’s annoying to try to sleep and hear BEEP BEEP BEEP all night long.

Finally the vote:

The vote: Should this be zoned Light Industrial?
Yes: Jude Prather, Shane Scott
No: Mayor Hughson, Mark Gleason, Alyssa Garza, Saul Gonzalez, Matthew Mendoza

So it failed. The developer can try something else, or sell it off.

Let’s just marvel at the close compassion offered to the weary travelers at Embassy Suites, shall we? What tender thoughtfulness. You can understand that a business traveler might not want to sleep next door to a 43 acre industrial site. What were you saying about the SMART Terminal again?

One final note:

At 1:25:10, the developer is trying to say that we should approve this project because no one else will want to develop it. And he says this exact quote:

“No large grocery store chain will consider this property because of the new HEB which is across the street.”

UH WHAT NEW HEB ACROSS WHICH STREET?

Across I-35? Across McCarty? Across Leah Ave (towards Amazon)? What does he know that I don’t know?

The location of a 3rd HEB has been controversial. First, constantly we’re talking about how few resources there are on the east side. The east side needs amenities.

But also, there’s history here. Back in 2016, City Council approved an HEB going in on the corner of Wonderworld and Hunter. People were furious. The main reasons:

  • The 2015 floods were just a year earlier, and now we were talking about paving a massive bit of land along Purgatory Creek
  • this would require a bunch of curb cuts on Wonderworld, which violated the agreement when the greenway was developed.

Quick digression on the Wonderworld extension. Wonderworld used to stop at Hunter Road. You took Old RR12 to go west towards Wimberly. It took decades to design and extend Wonderworld west, because it’s cutting through Purgatory Creek, which is really sensitive area. There was a complicated deal involving donation of greenbelt land and promises to take care of this area.

Given all that, this quote is hilarious:

“We couldn’t find a more environmentally sensitive area to go through,” said Sabas Avila , the city’s assistant director of public services. The area includes a flood control dam, caves, endangered species such as the golden-cheeked warbler and black-capped vireo, aquifer recharge zones and a Native American burial site, Avila said.

“Believe me, we tried! But this was the best we could do.”

(I’m being a jerk, taking the quote out of context. The speaker is probably an environmentalist.)

Anyway: it appears the proposal for the Wonderworld HEB is still on hold.

Bottom line: this developer appears to know about some new HEB, relatively close to Embassy Suites. Eeeeenteresting.

Hours 2:03-2:59, 4/4/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 13: Opioid settlement

Obviously there is a massive opioid crisis right now, with severe addiction, Fentanyl overdoses, and all the rest of it.  I’m pretty sure anyone reading this site is pretty aware of the scope of the crisis. (Hays County made the New Yorker, even.)

If you really want to go down a dark path, read up on the Sackler family and how intentional it was that pharmaceutical companies worked to ramp up addictions, in order to make grotesque amounts of money. (Or watch the three part John Oliver version.)

But if you don’t want to go down a dark path, just know: there were eventually national lawsuits, and now there are settlements which cover a tiny fraction of the destruction of the wake of the opioid crisis.

Which brings us to:

And

So we’ll get around $300K from this settlement.  Alyssa Garza makes the case that this should go towards evidence-based treatment solutions.

Will this help the opioid crisis? Yes, in the sense that jumping up and down gets you closer to the moon.  There’s a lot still to be done.

…

Item 15: We are buying a Pumper, Midship, 1250 GPM, Aluminum Body, Spartan Metro Star, 4-Door, Tilt Cab, Single Axle Spartan fire truck.

Shane Scott jokes, “Wouldn’t the $300K from the opioid settlement just about cover the shortfall here?” 

Haha, it’s funny because fuck those community members wrestling with addiction and overdose! Shane is a funny guy. 

…

Item 19: We talked about Gateway signs before. The choices before were…questionable:

To me, they were very corporate-lobby.

Today city staff presented four new options, and I think they’re all better!

I love the heron.  Easy, done.  NEXT!

Council is split.  They argue over the “Est 1881” for a while, because that date is wrong. It should have been 1851 but maybe 1808, and if you look on our seal, it says 1877. Or maybe tens of thousands of years ago! So that will change.

Mayor Hughson doesn’t like any of the overhang bits – the tree, the words “San Marcos”, etc.  And she also wants the rock to be more horizontal and less angled.

Mark Gleason advocates, “The simpler, the better.”

In the end:
We ❤ the heron:  Matthew Mendoza, Alyssa Garza, Shane Scott
We ❤ the simplicity of Option B: Jane Hughson, Mark Gleason, Saul Gonzalez
That tree, tho! Option D for Jude Prather

City manager Stephanie Reyes and Jane Hughson both worry that locals don’t actually identify those big herons with San Marcos very much.  I suppose it comes down to how often you get to the river.  

Here’s where the signs will go:

It’s always odd when they draw I-35 going left-right instead of up-down. (But who declared that North was oriented Up anyways? I’m not going to defend the Big North Industry. We can let North go to the right and West point up for a change.)

Hours 0:00-1:13, 3/21/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen Comment:  Mostly of the speakers are people angry about the SMART Terminal. 

A big fight is (hopefully) brewing.  However, the development agreement was already discussed (in a pretty pathetic discussion) in January, and then approved back in February.

This is the same problem that happened with the La Cinema studio over the aquifer last year: by the time the public hears about something and has time to organize and respond, the development agreement has already sailed through Council.

With the SMART Terminal, the developer does still need more approvals. The new land isn’t yet zoned Heavy Industrial. So there are still intervention points. But the foundation has been set, and it’s very frustrating how quickly the basic agreement gets sealed.  

In February, the SMART Terminal went to P&Z to be zoned Heavy Industrial. Because so many community members showed up and spoke at that meeting, P&Z delayed the vote a month, to give the developer time to meet with neighbors and gain their buy-in.

The speakers this week described how the meetings are going. It sounds like the developers are being giant pricks about meeting with neighbors, let alone gaining their buy-in.

When they finally met, the neighbors learned some interesting things. First, recall that SMART stands for San Marcos Air Rail Transit. It’s located right where the airport, railway – and unfortunately the river – all meet.

Anyway, here’s what the developers said to the neighbors:

  1. There’s no rail.  There’s not going to be any rail. The developers haven’t reached out to the railroad company and have no intention of incorporating the railroad into any of the five stages to be built.
  2. There’s no air traffic, either. And no plan for any future airport tie-in. 

So basically they’re planning a 2000 acre truck loading and unloading industrial site, right on the river?  It’s gone from SMART to SMT?  (Maybe the R was supposed to stand for River. The San Marcos All runs down to the River Terminal. Wheeeee.)

In response, the developers say, “Look, back in 2018, council told us this was the right place for heavy industrial.”

But let’s check that for a second:
– First off, in 2018, it was 900 acres, and now it’s 2000 acres. 
– Second, clearly in 2018, the whole point was that the airport is right next to the railroad. Otherwise, you’re just building a massive industrial complex on the river.

So as best I can tell, that is the plan: a massive industrial complex on the river.  This really seems to be a terrible idea.  Unfortunately, this council (minus Alyssa) really has heart eyes for corporations. 

…

Items 16 and 18: Starting on next year’s budget.

Council and department heads had a big two day workshop, where they envisioned the city for the next year in broad terms.  This statement is the result, and it’s supposed to be the starting point for the new budget.  

Here’s what they came up with: 

Each of those has 5 or 6 sub-points, and then each of those has another 2-3 sub-sub-points. So for example, under Quality of Life & Sense of Place, it says:

The whole thing is pretty long. If you’re curious, read it all here. That document is supposed to be the scaffolding for the actual budget, which gets built over the spring and summer.

As for last Tuesday, there was not much more additional discussion. Max Baker spoke during the public hearing portion, and made some points:
– Weren’t you all going to do an Equity-based budget through a DEI lens?
– Annexing distant neighborhoods blows a hole in your future budget. As soon as they’re built, you have to provide fire/EMS/PD, as well as utilities, and it costs more to staff new far-flung firehouses than you’re bringing in with taxes. Sprawl is expensive for the city.
– Budgets are moral documents.

These are all good points!

Alyssa asks her colleagues to consider a participatory budget process next year. Get the community involved. This would be great. Maybe CONA reps could solicit input from their neighborhoods, and then contribute ideas when Council puts together their strategic goals.

(Because I’m a pessimistic jerk, I can also imagine neighborhoods coming up with goals that I’d find awful, like “let’s keep poor people far, far away.” So there need to be checks and balances.)

Hours 1:13-2:22, 3/21/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 19: Sam Aguirre used to be the lawyer for P&Z, and Michael Constantino was the lawyer for City Council. (I’m sure they both did more than that, but that’s what they were on camera for.)

Sam got hired by Seguin, so he left in the last year or two. Then Michael Constantino retired, a few months ago, so we had a vacant attorney position.

And now we’ve poached Sam Aguirre back! Welcome back, Sam.

Item 21: You know McCoy’s, the local building supplies place on Wonderworld:

They’re actually a chain with 84 stores across Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico.  But their headquarters is here in San Marcos:

That’s on northbound I35, past HW 80, right by the DMV.  

I went down a bit of a rabbit hole reading their little history blurb from their website, which I found weirdly fascinating. The McCoy great grandfather started off selling roofing supplies in Galveston in the 1920s, which is obviously lucrative every time a hurricane hits, although they make a point to say they didn’t price gouge. They switch to building supplies in the 1940s. They move the headquarters to San Marcos in the 1970s.  They kept growing and did very well in the 80s.

But then in the 90s, Home Depot and Lowe’s show up on the scene. This is the part I was very interested to read. How do you handle it when the Walmart of your industry comes to town? McCoy’s took a hit and described it pretty unflichingly.  They closed about 1/5th of their stores and scaled up their existing stores. They experimented with ideas that failed and they shut them down a few years later. But it’s now been 30 years, so I think they made it through.  It’s still entirely private and family owned, and they also own a bunch of land and a big ranch operation in west Texas.  

So back to that headquarters, on I-35. They actually own a really big tract of land right there:

They want to turn that land into a campus headquarters, here in San Marcos, for all their corporate leadership trainings and such. They’re picturing a campus with a lake and outdoorsy things where all the store managers can come be trained and hold retreats. Right now, they hold a bunch of these in Cedar Park. Wouldn’t it be nice to bring all that business home to San Marcos? 

City Council is 100% sold.  I’m not saying I’m opposed exactly, but this is catnip to good ol’ boys.  Jude Prather and Mark Gleason were fanning themselves with delight at the idea of a giant McCoy’s World of Leadership here in town. 

The current CEO, Meagan McCoy Jones, spoke in person about this.  She made a compelling case for the campus. My favorite part was when she had to explain that there are homeless people currently camped out on this land, and this was going to end.  She approached it fairly well: she started with her own efforts to combat homelessness and acknowledged the complexity of the problem, and then bluntly said, “but it will be a closed campus.” You understand.

Currently, this project is a long ways off. They were here today because they’re going to need to deal with these two light-red highlighter marks:

Those are roads on the transportation master plan, but McCoy’s is not on board with them, so they need to be removed.  Sorry, roads.

Item 22: More murals!

We have a San Marcos Mural Arts program. You can see a nice slide show of the murals here.

I particularly like the one across from Big HEB, which isn’t on that slide show:

It always cheers me up. Also, I had to go take that photo in person. That’s how dedicated I am. I tried to grab a photo off Google Maps, but it’s out of date:

Anyway, the next one coming is going to be here:

That is the back of the Old Hays County Justice Center, which currently houses Industry and Aquabrew.   That’s the view heading towards downtown on LBJ from I35.

A funny thing is that these photos are in the slide show on the Mural Arts website:

Isn’t that the same wall? I definitely have seen that mural. I like it, too!  Here’s another shot of it:

I couldn’t remember if this mural was currently up or not, so my Staff Photographer swung by and took a current photo here, too:

So there you have it. As far as I can tell, there used to be a mural, and then the mural got painted over, and now there will be a new mural.

The Arts committee is estimating $100K to paint the mural. But they’ve been planning this for years, and it’s a giant project.  It does not bother me to spend significant money supporting local artists and making San Marcos interesting and beautiful.

Item 24:  Meta-committees.

True to her word, Alyssa Garza wants to tackle the issue of skewed representation on San Marcos boards and commissions. Namely: it’s really old, white, and male.    Maybe not as entirely white and male as it used to be – which Jane Hughson often points out – but still way out of sync with the demographics of the city. 

To that end, they’re going to form a committee-on-committees.  Alyssa, Matthew Mendoza, and Mark Gleason all volunteered to be on it and study the problem.

Items 25/26 were Double Secret Executive Sessions on the Meet-and-confer renegotiations. 

Two days later, on Thursday, the first Meet-and-confer renegotiation session was held.  I can’t find a video recording of it, though, so I haven’t watched it. Mano Amiga was there in person, I think.

Q&A from the press and public:

Max Baker came back and raised a few issues in quick rapid-fire:

  1. What happened to equity-based budgeting?

Answer: there was never a consensus from Council to do so, but hopefully when we hire a new DEI coordinator, they’ll be on top of things.

  1. SMART, isn’t it an inland port? 

Nobody really answered, so I’ll take a stab at it: wikipedia tells me that inland ports are on rivers and dry ports are just land.  I suppose the SMART Terminal is on the river, although it would be pretty gross to use the San Marcos River for port purposes. I think Max was just pointing out that since Air and Rail are not part of it anymore, the SMART Terminal is just a SMT Terminal.

The real problem is that 6 out of 7 councilmembers are fine with SMT being an inland port or a dry port, and just want the neighbors to shut up about the whole thing.

  1. Are we worried about how the McCoy’s are really big players on GSMP? Right now GSMP brings lots of conferences to Embassy Suites, which we are still paying for.  What if GSMP switches to using this new McCoy’s campus for its events? 

No one responds to this, either, as most of them are very smitten with the McCoys, and also the McCoys conversation has just barely begun, anyway. 

  1. Vacancy tax: this is the one I find most interesting.  Can we look into a vacancy tax for landlords who just let their property sit derelict, while hoping that some fancypants will come pay higher rent? 

This is largely about the empty storefronts downtown, which really depress the whole vibe of the place.  Landlords want Austin businesses to come down and pay Austin rental prices for the space, and they seem content to just wait as long as it will take to find a tenant.

At first, Jane is hesistant, and seems to be saying that when they looked into this before, vacancy taxes weren’t legal in Texas. But Max says that he’s emailed in a bunch of different models for how to do it, like one where you charge them for extra trips by EMS/Fire Department/SMPD, which happen a lot more when a building sits vacant.

So: are vacancy taxes legal in Texas? Seems to be. There are two kinds of vacancy taxes: residential and commercial.  I can’t find anything that says they’re illegal, but I can’t find many examples of cities implementing them either.

Here’s a useful pamphlet from UT Law, but it’s from 2010. It has a bunch of helpful info, plus examples. Eg:

Dallas Downtown Vacant Building Registration Ordinance The Dallas ordinance requires owners of downtown vacant buildings to register their properties and pay a registration fee of $75, an inspection charge of $185, and a small additional fee per square foot of the building. Owners must submit a plan detailing a time schedule for correcting violations, a maintenance plan, or plans for renovations or sale of the building. The owner is required to submit an updated plan at least once every six months. Violations of the ordinance can result in criminal penalties, civil fines ranging from $500 to $2,000, and administrative penalties. The owner must carry commercial general liability coverage with a minimum combined bodily injury and property damage limit of not less than $2,000,000 annually.

I’m in! Let’s do it.

In the end, Jane asks if there’s a consensus on Council for staff to research vacancy tax options and bring something forward. And there is! So this will come back.

Hours 0:00-1:01, 3/7/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen comment:

  • Several people spoke about the HSAB money.  We’ve seen this item several times this year; it finally gets concluded tonight.
  • Two people talk about the Pick-a-pet ordinance, also coming back around tonight.
  • Two people talk about the SMART Terminal re-zoning. Not up tonight, though.
  • One person talks about Joshua Wright and the Hartman reforms

I had a stray thought about the SMART Terminal. I was on Charles Austin, next to the baseball stadium, stopped at a train. The train was going slower and slower, headed east towards 35. I was doing the thing where you try to figure out if the train is going to come to a complete stop before it gets across your path and trap you, or if the last car will make it across and set you free.

It occurred to me that the train was probably headed in the general direction of the future SMART Terminal. And I remember that it takes a train 1-2 miles to come to a stop. So imagine if we have a new SMART train intersection just east of town? The number of stopped trains is going to go through the roof. Traffic is going to be hella gummed up by stopped trains, if the SMART Terminal delivers on what they’re claiming.

I mean, we should still focus on the river pollution and massive amount of concrete, and all the rest of the questionable parts. But let’s save a little angst for worrying about the future train stoppings of San Marcos.

…

On to the meeting!

Item 6:  Way up by Whisper Tract, some developers want to rezone this little blue piece:

It used to be partly zoned Manufactured Homes, and partly zoned Future Development. They want to make it all Heavy Commercial.

Here’s what’s at the eastern tip of that little blue rectangle:

That is, the Saddlebrook mobile home community.

So is it fair to build heavy commercial next to them? Let’s put it this way: it would never be proposed next to wealthier neighborhoods.  At the same time, the western edge of that little blue rectangle is along I-35, and it’s reasonable to put Heavy Commercial along the highway.  Finally, the folks at Saddlebrook might like some commercial services like restaurants or laundromats or whatever nearby. (But there’s no guarantee this will be restaurants or laundromats.)

Jane Hughson and Mark Gleason aren’t sure about the size of the project on the east side being so close to the community. A 40 foot building with 30 foot setbacks is still pretty looming, even with a privacy wall.

The developer talks in person.  He and his partner are from central Texas, and they make little spec buildings that can later be configured for small businesses. So it’s unclear what would end up there.  

In the end, council approves it unanimously.  Hopefully it turns out the businesses that move in make good neighbors.

…

Item 7: Two acres in Cottonwood Creek, off 123.  This one kind of pissed me off.

Here’s Cottonwood Creek: 

It’s down by the high school.  Bowie Elementary is in Cottonwood Creek.  (I realized I could get some useful maps off the planning department website.)

Here’s a close up. Today’s proposed rezoning is for that little red trapezoid, in the yellow circle:

This area has seen tons of development in the past 2-3 years. In fact, this little red piece in that blue circle:

is right where this new Chevron just went in:

So back to the subject property: right now it’s zoned General Commercial. The developer wants to re-zone it CD-4.  In theory, you can still put commercial in CD-4, but that’s not what will happen. It will be townhomes or apartments. 

Here’s the thing: the east side desperately needs commercial. They shoudn’t have to drive so far for grocery stores and basic retail.  And that’s not just my opinion – the city planners are constantly saying that people on the east side tell them this.  

And furthermore, many residents wrote in on this very item so say so!  Apparently Council got letters from people in Cottonwood Creek saying to please keep it commercial. This is not hypothetical!  They were told exactly what the neighbors want!

The developer is arguing that the property has sat there for 20 years and nobody has wanted to put commercial there, so therefore he should be able to re-zone it. But he’s being a twerp. He knows that commercial lags behind residential, and residential is finally just now getting built.   If you don’t set aside land and earmark it for commercial uses, an entire area will get zoned residential and by the time someone might like to put a restaurant in, there won’t be viable places left.  

Mark Gleason seems to be toting water for the developer. He knows the neighborhood wants commercial there. First, Mark asks what commercial is allowed in CD-4.  He’s told that all kinds of commercial is allowed – offices, restaurants, etc.  Could be a lot of possibilities! (But it won’t.)

Next, Mark asks the developer directly: “Are you looking to build housing? Or are you looking for more flexibility?”

Here’s what that means, “I have constituents that don’t want housing there. I want to be able to tell them I voted for flexibility. Could you supply me with my excuse?”

The developer cheerfully agrees that he is all for flexibility! We love flexibility!

Jane says dryly,  “Clearly they are going to reduce the amount of commercial and add housing.  Otherwise they’d just stick with the existing commercial zoning.”

Mark says, “I’m a yes on this one. I hate to lose commercial, but I trust the developer!”

Gentle Reader, listen to me: do not trust developers.

Alyssa Garza weighs in: she’s opposed, because of all the letters they’ve gotten from residents who are opposed to this. They all want commercial services to be built there.

Mark and Jane tut over how it’s a weird place for commercial, because it’s not on 123 directly.  It’s a little off 123.  

The vote: Should the little red trapezoid become apartments/townhomes?
Yes: Mayor Hughson, Mark Gleason, Saul Gonzales, Shane Scott, Matthew Mendoza, Jude Prather
No, keep it commercial: Alyssa Garza

This is really hypocritical.  Right now, the VisionSMTX comprehensive plan is working it’s way through P&Z and City Council. The historic district has turned out in large numbers to complain. Several members of P&Z and Jane Hughson are going through the proposed plan closely, with an eye to preserving neighborhoods and preventing anything from happening to them.

The most sacred thing in the world, based on all language being used to criticize VisionSMTX stuff, is the voice of a neighborhood for self-determination. Neighborhood plans! Neighborhood character studies! Ask the neighborhood if Zelick’s should get a CUP! Neighborhoods are sacred.

But this vote tells the lie: we didn’t mean all neighborhoods! Sorry for the confusion. We just meant that we should pander to the noisy, wealthier neighborhoods west of I35. Cottonwood Creek wants to preserve that red trapezoid of commercial on the corner? Sorry, suckers!

Finally: we do need housing. There are multiple, competing needs here. But you shouldn’t pit one need against another. The whole city needs housing, but it doesn’t need to come out of Cottonwood Creek’s limited options for commercial development.