Citizen comment: The intersection of Hunter and Wonderworld is deadly and needs to be fixed. The speaker kept mentioning “new paint” as a solution, which made me think that she specifically meant that weird little island blocking what used to be the right turn lane from Wonderworld, north onto Hunter (on the corner with the CVS store.) I’m glad we’ve added bike lanes, but I also see cars bumble over that island every time I’m at that intersection. And there do seem to be a lot of accidents.
Item 11-12: Annexation and zoning 65 acres on the corner of Rattler Road and McCarty. It’s this little red square with the star in it:
We’ve seen this area several times recently. It’s been a zoning bonanza:
Back in September, these other folks wanted (and got) a cut-and-fill exemption for that blue region. And back in August, the neighboring property (in that yellow-puke color) was zoned CD-5. It’s going to be apartments. (Also, a gigantic development was approved behind the outlet malls at that same meeting.)
The red rectangle is proposed to be CD-4. In that zoning, you’re allowed to build duplexes, townhomes, apartments, cottage courts, and other things that are denser than traditional neighborhoods but still feel small scale. (But you can also just build apartments, I think.)
The red rectangle and the yellow-puke rectangle are owned by the same people. So they’re selling the city on a larger vision where the yellow-puke one is dense, traditional apartments, and then this red one is more varied with all the duplexes and townhomes. Sort of transitional in scale towards single family houses.
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?
This is a good spot for infill. There is already infrastructure and coverage for this area.
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?
Some day, the planning department will read my blog and hastily fall all over themselves in an effort to answer this question.
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. Not in a flood zone. No run off to the river or any other environmental hazards, as far as I can tell.
Given the duplexes, townhomes, apartments, cottage courts, and other things, it has the potential to be very good. It won’t be uniformly single-family detached houses.
Social: Is it meaningfully mixed income? Is it near existing SMCISD schools and amenities?
It is very close to SMHS, and not that far from Goodnight and elementary schools.
As for whether it’s mixed income, that depends on the developer. If the developer takes advantage of what they’re allowed to build, it could be mixed income. But just because they sell a compelling vision during the approval phase does not make it binding.
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?
The larger region has the potential to become this. We shall see.
Final judgement: It sounds mostly good. Go for it.
…
So what did council do?
There was a little discussion about including a buffer at the back of the property, as a courtesy for the homes right there, which are outside city limits. Staff will bring back a proposal at the next meeting.
And then they voted, and it passed 7-0. (Where’d the clickers go?)
I personally think this project passed all the criteria with flying colors. But you know Max would have had a dozen questions about it. Perhaps all the questions got settled in Secret Executive sessions – it’s just really hard to know.
…
Item 13: Trace PDD
A few months ago, we did a deep dive into La Cima. Time for a Trace Deep Dive? Let’s do it.
That’s not my usual chicken-scratch map – this is the map from the developers. I love our city staff, but their maps are truly for shit.
It’s supposed to be a whole community – houses, apartments, parks, an elementary school, some stores. Mixed income. My only real gripe is that it contributes to sprawl – you’re kinda far from everything out there.
In 2017, there was a bond election to fund an elementary school there, and Rodriguez elementary school opened in August 2019.
It was next amended in 2019 and 2022. All the amendments were kind of finicky and detail-oriented – what should the heights of the apartment buildings be? Can we relocate sidewalks to this other side of the street? That sort of thing.
On the whole, it seems fine. It seems to need far fewer tweaks than La Cima or Whisper. (At some point, we’ll have to unpack Whisper Tract.)
…
So what’s up now? It’s coming up because they want to rezone part of it. Here’s the original zoning of Trace:
The dark orange part facing I-35 is General Commercial, about 44 acres.
Now they want to convert about 37 of those acres to apartments:
Both the light orange and brown parts of that red circle could now be apartments.
Is this good or bad? It’s complicated. At the P&Z meeting in December, Griffin Spell an excellent point: yes, we need housing. But Trace has not fully built the apartment complexes that they’re already allowed to build.
Furthermore, we also need amenities on the east side. It is a huge problem in this town that the east side lacks an HEB and the normal sort of shopping options. People are constantly talking to council and P&Z members about needing more commercial on the east side.
Griffin’s point is basically, “Let the developers finish building the apartment complexes that they’ve already agreed to build. If they still can’t find commercial occupants at that point, they can bring the rezoning back.”
The developer basically says, “Unfortunately, commercial is just not viable in that spot! It’s not visible from I-35!”
To which Griffen dryly responds, “You’re the one that put it there back in 2015, and nothing has changed since it was approved.”
The developer gave a weasely answer about communities maturing. It left me with the impression that they always planned on converting it to apartments, and the original commercial zoning was just there to make it look good.
So what did council do?
At City Council, there was no discussion of this point at all. They just approved it, 7-0. It gives the impression that they are not scrutinizing developers at all. The issue Griffin raised is complex, and at least deserves some air time. On this item, I’m giving the stink-eye to this new Max-less council.
Items 16-18: Various CDBG funding. Moving money around to fund rental and utility assistance, a project where they buy flood-prone land to keep it from being developed, and working on some ongoing flood projects for the Blanco Riverine and around Blanco Gardens.
Item 17: The Planning Department has a lot of fees for various services and permits. How do they set these prices?
It’s been a while since they updated what fees they charge. So they had a consultant come in and analyze how much it costs the city to carry out all these services. Then they compared fees to seven comparison cities. Then they shared all this at the December 14th workshop, and proposed new fees.
The city wants to balance covering at least 50% of their costs, without charging homeowners and small businesses too much or being too out of line with the other cities. I did not dive deep into the fees, but the methodology sounds fine. Council said it was all fine.
Item 20: The result of the HSAB drama from December. At the 3 pm workshop, city council worked on this with city staff. Here’s the outcome:
(Note: It says “The Board should not fund all programs” but they intended “The board should not feel compelled to fund all programs.”)
All seems fine. I think they’re going to go back and re-allocate the December money according to these principles.
Item 21: Mano Amiga circulated a petition to repeal the SMPD contract. Now, I obviously live here in San Marcos. If Mano Amiga were to approach me, I would sign their petition, because I generally support their mission.
But as your local friendly blogger, I’m going to call shenanigans – the actual petition is confusing. As far as I can tell, this is the entire thing:
What’s the actual, specific gripe with the meet-and-confer contract? And what’s the specific, desired outcome? Maybe there’s another page somewhere spelling it out? (Update: It’s the Hartman Reforms. But I still don’t see anything about it on the Mano Amiga website.)
Now this incident is extremely clear-cut abuse by the correctional officer. You’ve got an unarmed inmate in a hospital, wearing ankle shackles for god’s sake. He tries to escape. The officer shoots him six times. That officer had some fantasy that the only way to handle a person running away was to be judge, jury, and executioner. Joshua Wright has to die because this correctional officer can’t properly evaluate and handle the danger of an unarmed guy wearing ankle shackles. What the utter fuck.
Mano Amiga is clearly livid, and sprang into action, demanding bodycam footage and holding events and raising awareness. Of course, I wholly support their efforts for justice for Joshua Wright. This is the most just and deserving of causes to fight for.
Citizen comment: equally split among a few topics: – a smattering of anti-curfew advocates, – representatives from nonprofits who are upset about the allocations this year.
We’ll get to both in due time.
Item 1: Free electric cabs downtown! The pilot program is underway. You can call them, or hail them just by waving your arm when you see one, or you can use the app.
They’re kinda cute!
The cabs have a fixed route, but they’re allowed to go off route to pick someone up or drop them off, and then they just return back to the route.
And since you asked:
Okay, I think the route is kind of weird. – It doesn’t go through the actual town square. – It’s all kind of peripheral – There aren’t any designated park-and-ride parking lots, from what I can tell.
The more I stare at it, the more convinced I am that that can’t possibly be the route. That has to just be the boundary of the Main Street district. There’s nothing on the website that can plausibly be the route, though, either. I give up.
But I’m strongly in favor of free public transit, so hopefully this will stay and grow! I would most like to use it during July/August/September, when being outside feels like Satan’s butt.
The pilot program is supposed to stay under $500K, and last for another six months. Then hopefully it will become a permanent thing.
As long as this is turning into a full-fledged PSA, I may as well post the flyer:
Ok, I tested out that QR code above. It just goes to the same San Marcos website that I linked to above. There’s just a phone number to call the cab. No link to an app, no route, just a phone number. (The presentation definitely claimed there is an app.) Oh San Marcos: so many great ideas, so many terrible websites.
Nevertheless: test it out, why dontcha? Public transportation is a great thing!
…
Items 2,3, and 4: Several financial reports. – the quarterly CBDG audit, – the quarterly investment report, and – the quarterly financial report.
On that last one, we’re making bank. This is the most striking graph:
In other words, we planned to spend light-blue-money, but we actually spent dark-blue-money. And we thought we’d bring in medium-blue-revenue, but we actually brought in green-revenue. Wowza. Across the board, we’ve come in under budget and over revenue, in almost every category.
On the one hand, this is good: we operated under prudent expectations and it worked out. On the other hand, we have a community with needs, and we should not sit on a windfall of money. (Nor should we return it via tax breaks.) We should spend it thoughtfully, on high quality programs.
Mark Gleason moves to approve, and Jude Prather seconds it.
Alyssa Garza wants everyone to please explain why they’re acting against the boatload of emails, calls, and petition signatures they’ve received.
No one really answers.
Jude Prather wants the CJR committee to look at the severity of the crime. He makes several points: – Government should protect civil liberty, but also safety. – he had an awful experience as a teenager, when he was strip-searched at a mall, under accusation of shop-lifting. So he understands how negative police interactions can alter someone’s point of view. – But this is not 1998 or 1999, which was a simpler time. This is a more dangerous time with greater public safety concerns. So he’s siding with the curfew.
Jude gave the same line at the last meeting, “This is not 1999, a simpler time,” which I ignored for being dumb and bland. But the second time he says it, we have to take it more seriously, because it’s mostly wrong:
So homicides did spike during Covid, but it’s absolutely in no way true that 1999 was significantly safer than, say, 2019.
Furthermore: on the murder spike, Chief Standridge specifically said that there have not been any murders in 2022 in San Marcos, for the first time in forever. So things are really not grim today!
(I’m guessing that Jude Prather graduated high school in 1999, and he imprinted on 1999 as a kind of The Most Generic Year yardstick for America.)
Back to Council discussion
Shane Scott brings up Max’s question from two meetings ago: How many encounters do young people have with police? In the last few months?
Chief Standridge answers, (at 1:42): “We don’t capture data associated with nonenforcement. And contrary to anything that’s been heard before, I never said that to do so would be “draconion”. I never used that word.” He basically says it’s complicated and expensive to get that data.
Why is Chief Standridge fixated on the word “draconian”? Shane didn’t use the word. No, it’s because Max Baker has been using it, during citizen comment, and attributing it to Chief Standridge. Max has been claiming that Chief Standridge said it would be draconian to record every instance of police interactions with community members.
So what did Chief Standridge actually say? Let’s go back to November 15th. At 1:22, Max says: “There’s presumably some other data set that says this is how many times we stopped and talked to people, with this as the reason, and is that data that you all keep? Your officers presumably should be tracking every time they stop somebody, to talk to them, right?”
Chief Standridge answers, “I would hope not! I hope we don’t ever live in a police state or a police city, where we document every time we speak to a person.”
I am pretty sure that’s the line that Max refers to. Max has substituted in the word “draconian” for “police state”. So Chief Standridge is right that he never used “draconian,” but what he actually said has roughly the same meaning.
Goddamnit, I’ve got to stop getting off-track on these dumb tangents.
Back to Council discussion:
Shane Scott, continuing in good faith: “When I was a kid, the PD made friends with me and I got a degree in CJ. Most kids are good kids, and it’s hard for me to do curfews based on my experiences.”
Shane Scott moves to postpone until after it goes to CJR. This is, of course, the same thing they voted on last week. But sounds good to me!
Also, his relative is scared of 16-year-olds because he doesn’t know about drunk people yet. Don’t you dare tell him and ruin his innocence!
But more seriously: Mark is very worried about 15-year-olds with guns, but not at all worried about this:
It sort of makes curfews just seem quaint.
Back to Council Discussion
I’m getting bored of this whole discussion.
Alyssa makes a case for tabling it: Tabling this will bring a sense of haste to the CJR. Otherwise it will join the endless, non-urgent queue.
Jane says that over the years, she’s voted on this 4 times before with no issue. No need to postpone.
Chief Standridge answers the racial data coding question from last time: SMCISD uses racial data as provided by parents.
Saul asks Alyssa’s question from two meetings ago: What percent of violent crimes is coming from teenagers? Unfortunately, Chief Standridge explains that the answer involves queries into several databases, and will take a little bit of time. They’ll give it to the CJR committee when they have it.
The vote to postpone:
Fails yet again.
Final vote on the whole damn thing:
So that’s that.
It will go to Criminal Justice Reform committee, and they will do whatever they do. In the meantime, the curfew is in effect.
So you want to raise money for your city council campaign! Right now there are a few caps:
Individuals cannot contribute more than $500.
If you contribute more than $300, then your councilmember has to recuse themself when anything that you’re connected to comes up.
There’s an overall limit, based on the number of registered voters. Councilmember’s cap is 50¢ per registered voter, and mayor’s cap is 75¢ per registered voter.
Jude Prather and Shane Scott brought this issue up.
Jude Prather goes first. “It’s not the cap that’s the issue. It’s just confusing and too complicated. Things keep getting more expensive, and we’re going to have to revisit this year after year. Make it simpler. What if you get a lot of contributions? There should just be a max of $300 per person.”
Jane: We currently have a limit of $500 per person.
Jude: This is just so complicated. I mean, cost per voter?
Jane explains, “It’s just supposed to grow as San Marcos grows. If they just had a hard cap, the amount wouldn’t grow as San Marcos grows. We could change the scaling factor, though.”
(They keep saying “Teepo signs” when they talk about campaign costs. I have no idea what a Teepo sign is.)
Jude keeps going. He’s on quite a tear. What about ballot initiatives? And PACs? This doesn’t apply to them! What if a ballot initiative affects a race? (He was worried about this with marijuana decriminalization, if you’ll recall. What if we turn out young, liberal voters??)
Jane: I’m having trouble following what your solution is.
Jude Prather: I want it simpler. Just $300 cap per person. Get rid of the complicated charts with different numbers and amounts.
(OH!! T-Post signs! Got it.)
Jane Hughson was my favorite councilmember of the evening. She cannot get over the accusation that the funding cap is “too complicated”. She keeps saying things like, “I’m really trying to understand what you mean. You take the number of voters, and multiply by 50¢. What is the complicated part?” and “I can understand if you want to change 50¢ to $1 or $1.25. But what is the complicated part?”
Eventually Shane and Jude have enough dignity to stop asserting that it’s too complicated, when it’s plainly not. (And they’re not shameless enough to just bluntly say they want unlimited campaign spending.)
Everyone weighs in on what they’d like the scaling factor to be:
Shane Scott and Alyssa Garza: $1.25 per voter, for both mayor and councilmembers Matthew Mendoza and Mark Gleason: $1 per voter, for both mayor and councilmembers Saul Gonzales and Jane Hughson don’t seem to care.
Everyone seems to settle on the simplicity of $1 per registered voter. There! We did actually make it simpler!
One final note: last time, there was also griping that the number of registered voters fluctuates with different election cycle. No one really pursued that this time, which is good, because it is a pretty lame complaint.
…
I was surprised that Alyssa Garza is opposed to spending caps. Her argument goes that more money means hiring more local neighbors who might otherwise be disengaged, and increase local involvement.
I can see her point, but I don’t think that outweighs the built-in advantage for candidates with wealthy friends. I put a higher weight on making sure anyone can run a competitive campaign, regardless of economic background. (On the other hand, Alyssa has run for city council and I haven’t. So she has relevant knowledge.)
As a side note, apparently in Texas it is illegal to cap self-donations to one’s own campaign. So wealthy candidates will always have an advantage.
Item 13:
The Ethics Review Committee seems to always be a thorn in the side of Shane Scott, and to a lesser degree Jude Prather and Mark Gleason. I don’t know if they’ve been busted for something, or if they just don’t like the idea that they’re being watched.
Right now, councilmembers have to turn in two sets of documentation:
Yearly financial disclosure
Campaign contributions disclosure
The ERC looks over these, and flags anything that looks fishy. They’ve been doing this for years, but it’s not formally city policy. Jane Hughson wanted to formally codify the practice.
Shane Scott moves to deny. “The ERC does not need to meddle,” he says, “There are state rules, and the state will get involved.”
Jane explains where it came from, “After we passed the $500 cap, there was a candidate who took $1000, not knowing about the cap, and people were asking, “What do we do? Where do we report this?” It didn’t violate state rules, so you can’t report it to the Texas Ethics Commission.”
Shane Scott: “We shouldn’t be more restrictive than the state.”
Jane: “Okay, but we are. We just discussed the campaign caps. So…?”
Shane Scott removes his motion to deny, and Mark Gleason makes a motion to approve.
Next, Shane Scott makes an amendment to remove all the parts where the ERC looks at financial disclosure statements. “The state will take care of it!” he says again.
Jane again asks, “How would the state take care of it?”
Shane says, “FOIA requests, etc.”
The lawyer, Michael Consantino, says nope. The state would not get involved.
No one seconds Shane Scott’s amendment, and so it dies.
The overall vote to let the ERC review financial disclosures and campaign contributions:
There you have it.
…
Item 21: Jane Hughson wants a new zoning. There are a lot of applications for Heavy Commercial or Light Industrial where council has to write up a bunch of good-neighbor exceptions because there are residents living nearby. Usually they want to rule out uses based on loudness/smell/vibrations/etc. The method is to make a “restricted covenant agreement,” which sounds religious, but isn’t.
Jane is proposing something that she calls “Business Park”. Maybe not storefronts, but businesses that you wouldn’t mind living next door to. Smaller in scale and height, regulations on where loading docks could be, cranking down on noise/smell/vibrations/etc.
Everyone likes this idea. It’ll come back in some form.
Citizen Comment: the San Marcos activist community is a force. It warms a blogger’s heart to have a dozen activists show up and speak passionately against the proposed curfew. (You can read about why I loathe the curfew ordinance here.) They make the right arguments – keep kids out of the criminal justice system, it’s not equitably enforced, it can be traumatizing to kids, etc. In addition, a ton of homeschool parents signed on some quick petition, worrying that their kids might get tangled up in the daytime curfew.
One speaker – Bucky Couch – did show up to talk in favor of the curfew ordinance. I believe he’s the owner/developer of lots of things in town, maybe including the Kissing Tree? His kids own Cody’s restaurant, maybe? The Couches are in on many, many profitable projects around town.
…
Item 9: First up is a zoning request. You may remember this, from August:
Today we’re looking at the green square, #3, again, between Amazon and Embassy Suites.
Last time, the developer wanted to rezone it from General Commercial to Heavy Commercial. P&Z approved the zoning change, but then City council swatted them down, citing the beauty of Embassy Suites. We do not want clanky old Heavy Commercial zoning next to our prized and glorious tourist conference space.
Now they’re back, changing their request to Light Industrial. This time, P&Z denied it (due to the beauty of Embassy Suites), and Council felt stuck. It would now require 6 votes to overturn P&Z.
Council would like things like restaurants and service-related businesses to go in. They don’t want a bunch of warehouses. The developers want to include restaurants, but also a bunch of warehouses.
In the end, Council decided to form a committee and punt the matter to them. Stay tuned.
Item 10: This is the big item of the night, the curfew ordinance. (Discussed previously here.)
In Citizen Comment, the speakers made all the basic arguments against the curfew: – It does not reduce crime – It creates unnecessary and negative interactions between kids and cops – It can serve as an entry point for getting a kid ensnared in the legal and criminal justice system – It’s an extra expense levied on poorer families – It requires a high degree of officer discretion, and many of us don’t trust cops to use that discretion wisely – Other interventions for troubled kids work better – It targets certain people for their age, not for any misconduct. – Plenty of cities (Austin, Waco) have done away with curfews, and it’s been fine. – (Plus some hyperbolic arguments that overstated the dangers. Maybe they helped move the Overton window a tad.)
The presentation
Objectively, Chief Standridge has a great presentation. I don’t agree with him and I didn’t change my mind, but he’s a very good public speaker.
Here’s his basic claims:
The fears are overstated. The implementation is very mild.
We can run the data and show that there is no racial bias.
The curfew is a helpful tool – both anecdotally, and based on the literature.
Here’s the longer version of the Chief’s argument:
The fears are overstated. The implementation is very mild.
There are 13 excused reasons that minors can be out and about during curfew. Many of the speakers ignored this list of acceptable reasons, and asked things like, “What if you’re coming home late from work?” Well, coming home from work is on the list of excuses.
The fines tend to be at most $100 plus court fees. Not $500.
There aren’t that many juvenile citations, and there really aren’t that many curfew citations. Pre-pandemic, there were ~15 curfew violations per year. Last year and this year, it’s about 2-3 per year. This supposedly shows good discretion by officers. It’s not being abused. Also it’s supposed to show that the police have other priorities, namely violent crime and traffic crashes.
I’ll concede part of this: as far as curfews go, this current implementation does seem to be on the milder side. However, he’s super short-staffed right now, and his focus is on violent crime and car crashes right now. Maybe next year, the focus will be elsewhere.
Is there a racial bias?
Chief Standridge wants to unpack the claim that these stops are racially biased. The numbers look racially biased. Since 2017, there have been 87 curfew citations. (There’s a lot of problems with these numbers, but I’ll tackle that at the end. For now, let’s just go with them.)
These citations break down by race as so:
3 Black males 17 Hispanic females 40 Hispanic males 16 white males Zero white females or black females
Here’s how the chief spins this: “I admit it looks bad when you compare to census data. Hispanics are only 40% of the population in town, but they’re 65% of these citations. But remember, most of these were daytime truancy tickets! The right comparison is to the SMCISD demographics. And SMCISD is 73% Hispanic, so we’re actually not targeting Hispanic students disproportionately, after all!”
Alyssa Garza goes after him for sloppy data and mixing which data he wants to use. This is a thing that public policy folks have to be extremely careful about – how exactly are you coding race? Federal data calls Hispanic people “white”, which is a choice that feels at odds with how everyone thinks about race. Is he using self-identified race? How reliable are these numbers?
I’m also skeptical of his comparison. If he wants to use SMCISD data as his comparison group, then he needs to separate out the truancy data from the overnight data. What are the demographics for the 35% that are overnight violations? Where kids live in “certain” neighborhoods, as the chief put it last time?
The curfew is a helpful tool – both anecdotally, and based on the literature.
Next, he gets some anecdotes from cops that this ordinance has caused minors to change their behavior for the better. It keeps students at Lamar/Rebound on campus. There were gang kids involved with guns and shoot outs. There was a suicidal kid who was reconnected with their parents, back in 2001.
(This gang business is problematic, but I’m leaving that alone for today.)
Last time, Alyssa Garza specifically asked what percent of violent crimes are committed by minors in San Marcos. I want to know this, too, and it should be easy to acquire. He did not provide that data, which makes me speculate that it’s negligible.
The literature: Standridge acknowledges that the evidence is thin on curfews actually reducing violent crime. However, curfews help keep kids from being victims of crimes. And possibly they end up committing less crimes later on in life.
He also discusses truancy. Truancy is entirely separate from the police department. The elementary and middle schools all have attendance committees and parent liaisons and make home visits. (He didn’t say what the high schools do. But school funding is tied to attendance, so I’m guessing they have a lot of people dedicated to it.) He has talked with Judge Moreno about the extent and outcomes of truancy cases she sees: it’s a lot.
To me, the discussion of truancy court makes the opposite point – that the schools have an established system for kids who miss school, and the world won’t fall apart if curfew is ended.
My analysis:
First, Chief Standridge is focused on “Which kids are helped by the curfew?” The activists during citizen comment were all focused on “Which kids are hurt by the curfew?” Fundamentally, they are each focused on different groups of people. And look: life is messy. Both could be true – some kids can be helped, while others are hurt. The question is how to weigh and decide which of those claims gets priority.
Are kids helped by the curfew, like he claims? I’m skeptical of his anecdotes. For the kids carrying guns around, the cops can already intervene. For the kids who want to leave Lamar campus, I suppose the threat of a $50 fine could motivate them to stay put.
Does curfew protect minors from victimization, like the literature shows? Sure! I can believe that minors are protected from certain kinds of crimes if they obey curfews. On the other hand, this is a bit close to “lock up your daughters so they don’t get raped” territory.
But also: when we say that minors are less likely to be victims under a curfew, what kinds of crimes are we measuring? Is domestic violence included in that statistic? Because when people are trapped at home – like during covid – domestic violence increases a lot.
Now on to the activists’ side: are kids hurt by the curfew? It’s not automatically traumatizing to all kids to get stopped and asked why you’re out at 3 am. But most of these kids have seen the videos of cops shooting black and brown men, and then, if you’re black or brown, it might be terrifying. I’m not sure Chief Standridge fully gets what a trust-deficit the police have. And he also glosses over the idea that he may have racist officers that are rougher with black and brown kids than with white kids. (He’d be foolish to pretend he has no chance of having MAGA police officers.)
Finally: some kids would just like to wander around at night, and they’re not going to be destructive jerks about it. We generally take civil liberties extremely seriously. You need to have a compelling reason to remove someone’s freedom.
One final thought: You maybe could probably talk me into the daytime truancy curfew more easily than the late-night curfew. I can see a clear, direct benefit to kids to making sure they get that high school diploma. But you need to be talking with the school district, and as far as I can tell, the school district hasn’t been involved at all.
So what do our councilmembers do?
Everyone is more uneasy about the curfew now. Last time, the focus was on crime in neighborhoods and how this curfew was good for everyone else. The focus was not on the kids (besides Max and Alyssa). Even Mark “gunshots every day outside my house!” Gleason is now thinking about actual juveniles, and he is worried that home schooled kids will get caught up in the truancy curfew. (The ordinance gets amended to include home schooling as a defense to prosecution.)
Saul proposes that the whole thing get sent back to committee for further drafting.
Jane Hughson says, “Back? It never was in a committee.” But nevertheless, Saul’s proposal sets things in motion.
Alyssa Garza always makes the most sense. But tonight, Shane Scott makes the second-most sense. He basically says, “The speakers were convincing and the chief was also convincing. But when I was a kid, I was allowed total freedom as long as I didn’t get in trouble. I just don’t like constraining anyone’s freedom if they’re not doing anything wrong.”
Alyssa Garza makes the best points. Basically, it’s complicated:
What about kids with informal jobs?
What about kids avoiding violent or unsafe homes?
Can we involve more players at the table?
This is exactly right. The reasons that a kid might be out at 3 am are big and complicated, and sometimes innocent and totally fine. Let’s bring social services and Community Action and the schools into the conversation, instead of being authoritarian about it.
Last time, Max Baker made an amendment to cap the citation at $50, plus court fees. Mark Gleason was the only person to vote against the cap.
This meeting, Mark Gleason tries to undo it. He makes a motion to allow penalties of up to $100 plus court fees, because he’s a jerk because he mistakenly believes that stiffer penalties are a bigger deterrent to bad decisions. (Actually, if you want to deter crime, you should have small, predictable consequences. The main problem here is that getting caught is extremely erratic, not the size of the penalty.)
But no one seconds Mark’s motion, and I enjoyed listening to the silence drag out. The malevolent little amendment gasped for breath, and died.
The curfew expired at the beginning of November. So currently, there is no curfew ordinance. (Children! Go run nuts! All hell has broken loose!) The question is:
Should this get sent to the Criminal Justice Reform Committee, and then renewed when they come back with their recommendations?
Or should this get renewed, and then sent to the CJR committee, and then revised when they come back with recommendations?
Alyssa makes a motion for the first option.
The vote to postpone without renewal:
So that fails. (Alyssa mutters “y’all are so fake” quietly.)
They unanimously agree to send it to the Criminal Justice Reform committee.
Should it be approved in the meantime?
One technicality: this is still the first reading. Last time, the first reading never passed. So this still has one more reading to go through.
…
Post Script #1: Just for funsies, let’s dunk on “defenses to prosecution” for a moment:
#9: Anyone between the ages of 10-17 who is married can be out past curfew. What the fuck is going on with that?
This ordinance was originally written in 1994. You know what it was intended to mean back then, of course: if an underage girl has married an adult man, and she’s out past curfew, then you wouldn’t take her home to her parents anymore. She’s married into the adult class of people now, and her husband deserves all deference on the matter. It is super-duper creepy as hell!
Furthermore, it doesn’t stand up to the barest of logic. An underage married person isn’t at risk of being a victim of crimes? An underage married person can’t commit crimes? Doesn’t need to finish high school anymore?
Honestly, show me a 17 year old married girl, and I actively want someone pulling her aside and asking if she needs help. Most likely, she either got pregnant, or she was escaping something worse at home. Either way, she could probably use a hand.
…
Post Script #2: The the data from Chief Standridge’s presentation is kinda gibberish.
Exhibit A:
Brought to you in patented squint-o-vision, because I had to take a screen shot, because it doesn’t appear in the packet.
At 1:49:45, Chief Standridge is partway through this slide, and he talks about the green area on the far right, Curfew Citations. He says “the raw number of citations for 2022 is two.” So I’m inferring that the 3rd-from-right column is the raw number of curfew citations for the past five years. Add those up: 17+14+11+3+2=47 curfew violations over the past five years.
However, no one refers to 47 as the total curfew violations. The total violations cited everywhere is 87 citations for the past five years. It’s in both the presentation, it’s used throughout the discussion, and it’s in the police memo from the packet.
Chief Standridge uses the smaller numbers to illustrate how sparingly this is used, but uses the bigger numbers to talk about demographics and how there’s no racial bias. It’s weird and I don’t understand the disparity between the two numbers.
But wait! There’s more!
Exhibit B: Here’s how the 87 breaks down racially:
Standridge computes the percentages black/Hispanic/white from this. Here’s how he gets his percents:
3 Black kids out of 87 total violations: 3/87 = 3.45% 17 females + 40 males = 57 Hispanic kids out of 87 total violations: 57/87 = 65.52% 26 white kids out of 87 total violations: 26/87 = 29.89%.
See how there are 26 white kids, instead of 16? That’s because 3+17+40+1+16=77 total citations, not 87 citations. There are 10 unaccounted kids in his racial breakdown, and so he made them all white. (And maybe it is just a typo. It could be that the true number is actually 26 white kids, not 16.)
Those are the percents for the blue bars in this chart:
I know, it’s miserable to read that chart. But the three blue bars are labeled 3.45% on the far left, 65.52% for the middle blue bar, and 29.89% for the blue bar on the right.
(That graph is supposed to be the defining argument that the curfew isn’t being administered in a racist way. He’s comparing the blue curfew citations with federal census racial demographics (orange), and SMCISD racial demographics (gray). Each cluster of three bars is a different race, with Black kids on the left, Hispanic kids in the middle, and white kids on the right.)
What’s the correct computation, then? You need to change the denominator. You only know the demographics of 76 kids, so you must compute the racial percents out of 76.
Here are the correct percents: 3 Black kids out of 76 violations: 3/76 = 3.95% 57 Hispanic kids out of 76 total violations: 57/76 = 75% 16 white kids out of 76 total violations: 16/76 = 21.05%
I don’t think this is part of some big conspiracy where Chief Standridge is intentionally massaging the data. I do think he’s spouting a bunch of gibberish, because he’s got inconsistent numbers handed to him, and he went with what was most expedient to serve the narrative he wanted to tell.
Item 13: Marijuana has now been decriminalized in San Marcos! Go nuts. But not too nuts, because you’re still in Texas and none of the other police forces (including the Tx State campus cops) are playing by these new rules.
….
Items 14/15: Reallocating money.
The Chamber of Commerce has $200K leftover Covid Relief money. The city is giving it to a few other programs:
Training members of the community to get certified on QuickBooks for bookkeeping
Training local small business owners and setting them up with bookkeepers from the first program
Childcare gap funding for families
I am hugely in favor of that last one. Childcare is wildly expensive.
There’s also some CBDG-covid money to be reallocated, $188K worth. The city staff propose that it go to two programs:
Marble Falls has a stress-healing nature program, where you’d take a bus there and spend a day or two outside. It’s ~$300 per person, which would be covered by $75K of the Covid money.
Improvements to the Kenneth Copeland Memorial Park. It used to be the El Camino park, but was renamed to honor the officer that was killed in 2017. They want to put $112K into improvements to it.
Nobody likes the Marble Falls idea. Too far away, too expensive, and we have very nice local parks.
Alyssa Garza proposes that we use the money on something that meets people’s direct needs a little better – rental assistance, utility assistance, that kind of thing. Jane Hughson, Saul Gonzalez, and Matt Mendoza all basically agree with Alyssa.
Mark Gleason and Jude Prather want to put $113K on the Kenneth Copeland park, and the other $75K on rental assistance.
Shane Scott wants to put all $188K on local parks, arguing that parks benefit everyone, while rental assistance only benefits some people.
Alyssa says, “You guys. The people are going to be living in those parks if we don’t help them cover their rent,” and tells them they’re out of touch with the needs of the community.
Jude Prather relents. But he makes some dippy comments here, “Could we call it Kenneth Copeland rental assistance?” (The park is already called the Kenneth Copeland park. We’re not disrespecting the officer by postponing new picnic tables. It’s already a nice park.) “Next September, I’m knocking on your door for that Kenneth Copeland money!” he says. Jane Hughson suggests that he doesn’t need to wait till next September. He can just go through the normal budgeting process that starts in a few months.
Anyway, five councilmembers want to direct the money towards rental assistance, so that’s how it will go.
…
Finally, they have to go through and replace Max on a bunch of committees and such. There’s probably 20 appointments or so.
Some that caught my attention:
Shane Scott has joined the Criminal Justice Review committee
Alyssa Garza has joined the Workforce Housing committee.
And a bunch more. Mostly these details are getting too into the weeds, even for me.
Citizen Comment: Citizen Comment is mostly animal shelter experts who are politely asking us to undo the amendments that were added to the Animal Ordinance last meeting, and to trust that the experts have designed the policy to work best when you don’t throw sand in the gears.
One person also speaks up about the curfew ordinance, which ends up being the item of the night that I’m most fired up about.
Item 1: Sidewalk Maintenance and Gap Infill program
There is a quick update from the city – how do they pick which streets to install sidewalks on, what’s the process, how does it work for the landowners, etc. It seems very straightforward to me.
Your neighborhood can petition to get sidewalks added*. Max Baker asks if there is a petition process available to prevent sidewalks from being added to your neighborhood. There hadn’t been, but since all the councilmembers like the idea, there will be, now.
(I hate this idea. I want everyone to want sidewalks. They benefit people who may not live on your street! But that is not the Texas we live in, so I suppose anti-sidewalk petitions are good for the libertarians out there.)
* Although it’s not totally clear at that link where you find the petition. Maybe you have to email.
Item 17: Curfews. I actually feel really strongly about this issue!
Did you know that San Marcos has a curfew for underage residents? Neither did Chief Standridge. Apparently it’s been on the books in its current form since 2009, and it gets re-upped every three years.
There are two parts:
Curfew overnight: 11 pm – 6 am on school nights, and midnight – 6 am on weekends.
Curfew during school hours: 9 am – 2:30 pm, Monday through Friday.
Chief Standridge first says that it’s not used very often, and it was impossible to use during Covid when everyone was at home during school hours anyway. So far this school year, they’ve only used it three times.
He specifically talks about “troubled neighborhoods”, neighborhoods with violent crime. Standridge likes curfews because it gives officers an opening to stop and talk to someone who looks too young to be out and about. Otherwise they’re not allowed to just detain people walking down the street, because that is a hallmark of a police state.
I’m so frustrated by the conversation that I want to start with a rant, instead of the council discussion. We’ll get back to the council discussion.
Are curfews best for kids?
Let’s say you’ve got a kid who is jeopardizing their future by missing too much school. Is it in their best interest to entangle them with cops and the legal system? NO. Just no.
Best case scenario, it costs them or their family $150 to go to court and straighten it out. Worst case scenario, they are now tangled up with the juvenile criminal justice system, and they are starting to accumulate prior offenses. This is particularly bad for kids who are likely to get racially profiled.
We lock up an astronomical number of people in the United States. We have a moral obligation to work to keep kids out of the criminal justice system.
And remember, we’re not cruising all neighborhoods on an equal basis, looking to talk to youths! We’re cruising troubled neighborhoods, and stopping young people there. The effect is biased along race and class lines, no matter how much Chief Standridge insists that there’s no racist intent. Maybe there is no racist intent! But in effect, there is bias. Only kids from troubled neighborhoods are getting ensnared under curfew laws.
What about those kids that really are getting up to mischief overnight or during school? Most of the time, you can let the family handle it. The police are not needed to help the kid straighten out.
But other times, kids causing problems are the ones that have big problems. They are in unstable homes. They have mental health issues. They are living with poverty and/or witnessing substance abuse and/or violence and/or manipulation and/or emotional control, etc. Getting these kids ensnared in the legal system just pours fuel on the fire.
What’s the alternative? What would be in the best interests of the kid? Basically, any meaningful, evidence-based intervention. Run it through community services, rather than the cops. Cops are really not trained to handle traumatized kids! Traumatized kids will deliberately try to provoke adults and be disrespectful, and cops are the worst at handling that kind of thing!
Why don’t we do implement more of those interventions that are shown to work? First of all, we do. Notice that there was no one from Community Action or the public schools or other after-school programs there to talk about what actually works against truancy.
If kids are still slipping through, why don’t we do even more of these programs? $$$$$$$$$. Anything that works will be labor-intensive and time-intensive. You have to have programs and you have to take time to build relationships with kids. You know what’s cheap? Letting officers stop kids whenever they want and intervene.
This is absolutely not best for kids. This is cheapest for kids.
Is it best for everyone else? Does it protect the rest of us to keep kids under curfew?
No.
Do kids get up to mischief? Abso-fucking-lutely. They are absolutely capable of petty theft and vandalism and being a nuisance. But if any of those things are going on, then cops are allowed to stop people who may be involved. If someone calls in that the neighborhood kids keep stealing shit off their porch, the cops are allowed to go talk to the neighborhood kids. No curfew needed.
Do kids get up to violent crime? Maybe occasionally? But most violent crime is going to be committed by men aged 17-30, who are not affected by curfew. You can address the stray kid with a propensity for violence using the same techniques that you address the 17-30 year olds. No curfew needed.
When there is mischief or criminal activity, there are already mechanisms to intervene.
But more importantly, curfews don’t actually work. The academic studies show zero or minimal improvement when there are curfew laws in place. (What actually works? This chart summarizes the outcomes of a bunch of programs, both good programs that work, and also the dumb, authoritarian ones like Scared Straight that turn out to increase crime. This longer read is really thorough and good on programs that work.)
So how did City Council actually deal with this?
First, Shane Scott makes a motion to deny. Great! I agree.
Max Baker asks several times for data surrounding whether or not curfew is used to just stop teens randomly. What percent of stops do not result in tickets? Chief Standridge says that they don’t track that, and it would be overly cumbersome to do so.
Mark Gleason is a Chief Stan-stan, and so he’s all in. Anything that reduces truancy and violent crime (or pretends to) is good with him. His wife is an educator, and knows that truancy is a major problem. And violent crime in his neighborhood is out of control.
Alyssa asks, “How much of the violent crime is actually committed by minors?”
Chief Standridge doesn’t know this either. He openly says that the point of a curfew is to give officers cover so that they can stop minors and ask them why they’re out and about. I genuinely think he thinks it’s best for kids. (It’s not.)
Fundamentally, if you’re a hammer, you see the world as a nail. If you’re a chief of police, you think that police intervention is good for community members. (It’s not, necessarily.)
Jane Hughson asks about the list of exceptions. For example, you’re allowed to be out after curfew if you’re heading home from work or church. You’re allowed to be out and about on school holidays. Why don’t we call those “exceptions”? Instead we call them “defenses to prosecution”.
The reason is kind of creepy: If we called them exceptions, then officers would not be allowed to stop minors with exceptions. If we call them “defenses to prosecution”, then officers can stop whoever they like and give them a ticket, and the kids can use those exceptions in court to fight the ticket. It means that the cops don’t have to presume innocence. They can presume guilt, and let the kids fight it, in court.
The vote to deny the curfew ordinance: Deny: Max, Alyssa, and Shane Do not deny: Jane, Mark, Saul
Jude Prather is absent. It takes 4 votes to win a vote, so the motion to deny fails. So now there is a motion to approve the ordinance, which still needs to pass.
Max Baker asks how much the tickets cost. This is also a big consequence of over-policing poorer neighborhoods! You nickel and dime people to death!
Do you remember how much hand-wringing there was over a tax increase of $24 per year, which goes to help the entire community? The tickets here are set by the judge, with a max of $500. Plus court costs, which run $80-$100.
Max Baker makes a motion to cap the ticket fine at $50. This seems eminently reasonable to me. You’re still running up $150 in costs by being stopped by cops.
The vote: Cap tickets at $50 max: Jane, Alyssa, Max, Shane, Saul Fuck those poor people: Mark
Mark believes that punitive punishments are effective. That is a very authoritarian mindset. It drives me up the wall.
Next we go down a real rabbit hole with data. Max Baker wants the police to start recording a lot more data around these curfew stops.
I think asking for data is a waste of time, to be honest. The issue of curfews is a moral issue, and we already know, straight up, that curfews target people based on where they live. The only consequence of asking for data is to throw sand in the gears, because data is cumbersome to acquire. (Furthermore, Max’s question – are you stopping kids in a biased manner? – is not going to be answered by the data Max wants. You’d have to know which kids they just let walk by, without stopping them at all.)
Alyssa reiterates her question about wanting to know what percent of violent crime is caused by minors. This is the right question. And it’s not cumbersome at all to acquire. You’re not asking cops to fill out an extra form throughout their day, you’re asking someone to retrospectively pull a number from a spreadsheet.
Standridge balks at this. Minors records are protected by law!
Alyssa points out that she wants aggregate data, not individual data. (What Alyssa does best on the dais is respond to points like this in a soothing manner. She says, “Data is really powerful! I bet we can figure out a way to get the answer and still protect the kids!” in an upbeat, soothing way. It’s very effective.)
Max goes off on a rant about Mark Gleason being a shill for the police, because they endorsed him, and therefore he’s going to be in favor of this, no matter what!
Max is a little off here – Mark Gleason has a true authoritarian streak. Mark supports curfews because he sincerely loves heavy-handed police tactics, and believes in “good guys” and “bad guys”, and believes that the police can tell the difference. The police endorsed Mark, but Mark was always already in their corner.
Mark Gleason takes offense, and goes on a rant about the violent crime in his neighborhood. (He lives in Blanco Gardens.) He’s sick of it! He hears gunshots all the time, and kids are stealing car parts and messing up people’s yards.
Clearly Mark thinks that allowing cops to stop and talk to anyone looking young on the streets will have an effect on violent crime. That’s a very authoritarian take, and ends up hurting people who “look” like criminals.
The vote: Should cops have to collect and present a lot more data? Yes: Max, Shane, Alyssa, Saul No: Jane and Mark.
Finally, the main motion on curfews:
The vote: Should we have curfews? Yes: Jane, Mark, Saul No: Max, Shane, Alyssa
So this fails too!! What does this mean? It means that when they discuss curfews at the next meeting, it will still be the first reading. However, Max will be gone and Matthew Mendoza and Jude Prather will be back. So I’m guessing this will pass.
How can the animal shelter distinguish community cats from someone’s much-loved pet, when they pick them up?
Should we ban pet stores from sourcing puppies from puppy mills?
1. On Trap/Neuter/Release vs Stray-Holds
Here is what the animal experts proposed:
Healthy outdoor cats do not get picked up. Except that they can be picked up, and checked to see if they’ve been spayed/neutered. If they haven’t, they can be taken to the shelter, then spayed/neutered, and then returned to where they were picked up. This is Trap/Neuter/Release, or TNR.
Here is what Council is worried about: What if Fluffy the house cat escapes, and bolts and gets lost? And suppose Fluffy has no visible identification. She gets picked up, spayed, and returned to the neighborhood in which she was lost. The owner does not get a chance to find her at the shelter and reclaim her, and Fluffy stays lost.
The experts say that only 2% of shelter cats are reconnected with their owners, but councilmembers are still worried.
(I suspect that this is why mandatory micro-chipping is a vital part of the policy. But that got scrapped somewhere along the line. Without mandatory micro-chipping, there will definitely be borderline cases where it’s really hard to tell community cats from half-tamed outdoor cats from skittish indoor cats that got loose.
But mandatory micro-chipping has its problems, too: how do you publicize and facilitate it? how do you get everyone to go along with it?)
Alyssa asks if it’s possible to publicize cats that are being returned under TNR? That way I could check the website and see if Fluffy was returned to a specific location, and try to go find her there.
They say yes, they could do that.
Mark Gleason is also worried about cats being spayed/neutered against the owner’s will. He wants the cats held for 48 hours before the mandatory spay/neuter, and then held for another 24 hours to let them recover from surgery.
Here’s the moment of the night that made me laugh:
Saul says, “I’m going to throw a monkey wrench in the conversation. What if the cat has been exposed to rabies, and doesn’t show any signs of rabies?”
The animal guy answers, “Any animal that’s potentially been exposed to rabies has to go through a ten day quarantine.”
Saul says, “But you wouldn’t know that. Because they’re not showing any signs. What’s the procedure then?”
Yeah, ya wise guy! Whatsya procedure then?
The answer is, “In the case that we don’t know….then we don’t know. I hope that never happens.”
Saul says ominously, “It happened on Barbara Drive, years back. Just thought I’d throw a monkey wrench in the conversation.”
CHECKMATE, ANIMAL ENTHUSIASTS. Don’t even try to come before Saul without vetting your double-secret rabies exposure policy. His work is done.
So where does the conversation stand? Two amendments were passed last time that the experts are strongly opposed to. Everyone is worried about how loved pets will get caught up in the system. (And Mark is hyper-concerned about owners’ rights to have Quiverfull cats.)
Alyssa suggests that we revert back to the original language proposed by the professionals. She points out that the experts are devoted to animals, and are proposing policy that’s been refined over years, and we should not dispose of their expertise out of sheer hubris. That as long as the shelter is appropriately funded, they will work hard to reunite pets with families, and will act in the best interests of the animals. (This is my opinion as well.)
Mark gets fired up. He’s convinced that if we revert to the original, that they will start euthanizing cats left and right. It’s really astonishing how little Mark trusts certain people in certain situations.
The shelter people answer his euthanasia concerns: Right now, we euthanize cats immediately if there is a medical need to end suffering. The only other reason we euthanize cats is due to overcrowding. This policy lets us keep from having overcrowding. Mark, your stray-hold amendment will keep us in an over-crowding cycle.
Finally, Jane says “There’s only five of us here.” (Shane Scott has gone home sick at this point) “Can we send this back to committee, to hammer out language separating community cats from pets-cats?”
The vote to postpone until January: Yes: Jane, Mark, Alyssa, Saul No: Max
So it passes.
Onto Issue 2: The Sourcing of Puppies from Puppy Mills for Pet Stores
They voted to postpone before they ever got to the puppy mill part of the ordinance. So this got absolutely no discussion! It was very weird.
I was so confused. But keep reading! It gets one final gasp during Q&A at the end of the meeting.
Jane Hughson wants to strike one of the amendments that Max made last time, about whether or not we should lobby the state legislature to let us levy fees on Texas State.
Clearly some conversation has taken place behind the scenes. Both Chase Stapp and Fire Chief Stevens hop on and say that it’s futile and counterproductive, because other college towns have tried, and the State University lobby is ridiculously powerful. It would be better to go talk to the university directly and see if we can get them to partner with us in some new way. After all, there’s a new president.
The meeting is winding down, and Max is pissed. He calls everyone apathetic and makes some barb about for-profit universities that I don’t follow.
Alyssa tells him that she’s going to vote to remove the clause, but she offers to go to Erin Zwiener with him, and research the issue, and help draft a statement that they can give to the legislative committee. I don’t know if he accepted her offer.
The clause is removed (4-1 vote) and the main motion passes (5-0 vote).
…
Question and answer from the press and public: One community member asks “What happened to the Puppy Mill part of the animal ordinance? Is there any way you can deal with that part?”
YES! Thank you! it was bizarre that they tabled the entire motion, and did not say one word about the most controversial part!
The lawyer says they could do this. You’d have to have a motion to reconsider the item, and then you could start discussing the puppy mill part.
Alyssa makes the motion, saying she’d really like to close out this one part. ME TOO!
The vote to reconsider the item: Deal with puppy mills now: Jane, Max, Alyssa No: Mark and Saul
So that failed, because it requires four votes for anything to pass. I do not understand how Mark manages to be on the wrong side of every last single vote, but there you have it.
(What I want to know still is: can the puppy mill part be brought back sooner than January? Or does it languish for another two months? We are just left hanging!)
Citizen comment: A ton of people turned out from Pick-a-Pet to fight the puppy mill ordinance. Mostly customers, with one or two employees. Their main talking points were:
We love our pet so much!
The employees love animals so much, and the atmosphere is so nice and caring there!
Sometimes you just want a pure-breed, right?
Why do you want to close down this nice store?
These people seemed earnest, but the arguments above are all bunk. You can have really loving, sweet employees and still buy your puppies in bulk from Minnesota farms with 3000 puppies and atrocious conditions for the breeding dogs. None of these things are dispositive.
Also, under the proposal, you can still buy your favorite pure-bred dog from a small scale breeder, where you can tour the facilities and admire the happy, handsome parents of your new doggo. And this nice store with loving employees can pivot to selling pet supplies and offering pet adoptions, like PetSmart does.
Another talking point is:
We’ve been open a year, and none of our pets have ended up at the shelter, so we’re not making the stray animal problem worse!
This is also not really the point. The point is the puppy mills.
The speakers were pretty over-the-top with the mushiness. Their pups have transformed their families from bleak grayness to shimmers and sequins, and brought happiness to their little girls for the first time in their Dickensian existences. Only pure breeds from pet stores can bring little girls that kind of feels.
Stay tuned – we will hash out this ordinance thoroughly in Hours 4:00-5:08!
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Item 16: About 40 acres near 5 mile dam:
It’s going to be apartment complexes. It had been zoned General Commercial, and now it’s CD-4, which can mean a lot of things. But they openly admitted that it’s going to be apartment complexes.
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?
Pester the Planning Department directors to start providing an ongoing, updated 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. Not in a flood zone.
A teeny bit of sprawl, insofar as Blanco Vista is already isolated and sprawly. But it’s not making Blanco Vista any more sprawling. It shouldn’t require much in the way of utility extensions.
Apartment complexes are pretty environmentally friendly, because they’re efficient.
Social: Is it meaningfully mixed income? Is it near existing SMCISD schools and amenities?
Not meaningfully mixed income. That’s my biggest gripe about big apartment complexes – it’s not good for a community to be economically segregated.
On the schools: Blanco Vista got a special carve out to be part of Hays CISD instead of SMCISD, even though they live in San Marcos. This kind of chafes, for a few reasons. First, because people disparage SMCISD for racist and/or classist reasons, and so Blanco Vista deserves a bit of side-eye for wriggling themselves out of district. (And whoever was on city council back then, too.)
Second, SMCISD is always weirdly close to getting forced to send money back to the state under the Robin Hood law, which is supposed to even out rich school districts and poor school districts throughout Texas. I’m not totally clear on the details, but it’s something like SMCISD needs families to balance out the university/outlet malls/non-family parts of San Marcos. So SMCISD particularly gets screwed when neighborhoods like Blanco Vista and Whisper Tract are in San Marcos but not in SMCISD.
That die is already cast, though. This particular apartment complex is in Hays CISD.
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, not that at all.
So is this good or bad? It’s mixed. More affordable housing is good. General Commercial would have been good as well, except developers seem to be too timid to build the retail that people need to have near their homes.
…
Item 17: I listened to this when it came through P&Z on October 11th. This one is fascinating.
The 2015 floods destroyed a lot of homes. Three years later, 12 of those families were awarded CBDG grants to build new houses. Of those, 9 families are now in new homes. The CBDG program either built new homes for them on new lots somewhere in San Marcos, or they owned the land and had their old homes torn down and built new ones, raised above the flood plain.
We’re down to the last three families. They are still in the houses that were flooded, all trailer homes. The homes are becoming quite dangerous – a kid fell through the rotten floor, two of the couples are aging and there are damaged stairs, there’s mold, and on and on. A family of six has no heat in the winter. And so on. They are still trapped in a nightmare that’s been going on for seven years.
These three families don’t own their land, and it’s in the floodway, so they have to be moved to new lots. The city has a few lots available, but they’re not ideal – over by Texas State, away from schools/family/community, etc.
So along comes this lot, in Sunset Acres, down the street from Mendez Elementary, where an old firestation used to be. It’s large enough to be redeveloped into three houses. It seems ideal.
However! At the P&Z meeting, about a dozen members of the neighborhood showed up. They are dealing with horrendous conditions on their street. Basically, raw sewage is frequently backing up into their bathrooms and up through their drains. It sounds like a nightmare. And several of them have regular flooding, as well. This has been going on for years and years.
They weren’t opposed to the houses being built eventually, but they absolutely did not want anything increasing the quantity of waste in those pipes until the sewage problems were fixed.
The city staff explained the plan to fix the sewage: TxDot is putting a larger sewage pipe under I-35, which should be done by 2025. Then the city will start the Sunset Acres drainage and wastewater project in this neighborhood. It’s a two phase project. Fingers crossed, everything will be done by 2029!
P&Z members basically gawked at City Staff and said, “Why have you handed us this utter shit sandwich?!”
It seemed like such a disaster – these three families are so desperate, and these other people are desperate in different ways, and we’re supposed to put the first group in with the second?! No. P&Z denied the zoning change 6-2.
So now it goes to Council. I am pretty impressed by the city staff. They got smacked down hard at P&Z, and they got to work. First they had a bunch of meetings with the neighborhood and with all the different engineers and utility workers, and they sent little cameras down pipes and tried to figure out what to do.
They came up with a medium-term plan and a short-term plan to supplement the long-term plan.
Medium-term: they’re going to replace one of the worst sagging, splitting pipes running down Broadway.
Short-term: They’re going to massively enlarge a detention pond, to help with the flooding. For the sewer, they’re going to add an access point to the sewage line where it gets clogged, and they’re committing to cleaning it out on a regular basis. This should go a long way to keep the pipes flowing and prevent sewage from backing up into homes. (The new houses can be built with back-flow preventors, but the city can’t pay for those to be installed in existing private houses.)
Why haven’t we already been cleaning the pipes regularly? It depends what kind answer you want. Over the past decades and generations, we haven’t been doing these things due to negligence and systemic inequity. More recently, we haven’t been doing it due to a shoestring budget. We’re not doing tons of things throughout the city that we could, if we had more money.
Everyone on City Council was both impressed and appropriately cautious with this potential solution. Sunset Acres residents are so burnt out on being ignored by the city that they are not exactly celebrating yet. A lot hinges on how well the city implements the short and medium-term solutions.
Still, I don’t want to gloss over the tremendous amount of effort that the city staff went to, to make this a win-win-win situation. It would be great to remedy the raw sewage backflow and house these three families and restore everyone’s faith in the power of a group of citizens raising a fuss.
The San Marxist 