Category: Hour summaries

Hours 2:54-4:00, 11/1/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 18: 120 acres by trailer park on FM 110:

They want it to be light industrial.

Max: These light industrial things only get built next to marginalized groups. No.

Passes 5-1.

Next big topic of the night: 

Item 15: I gather that City Council has a legislative committee comprised of Mayor Hughson, Alyssa Garza, and Mark Gleason.  Max Baker wanted to be on it, but he is not.  The legislative committee goes to the state capital in Austin and lobbies the state for different policy goals. 

Max gave the committee a wishlist of issues that he wanted them to tackle, and they did not take his suggestions, so he’s bringing it to the entire council. (Plus a few extra.)  

There’s a basic philosophic divide here: 
– Jane Hughson says over and over that she’s not exactly against the ideas, but she thinks they are battles that aren’t worth fighting.  That the opponents are too big and organized for measly little San Marcos. 
– Max feels that the time for change is always now. If no one starts a movement, change will never begin.

Max has nine issues, and they take them one by one. (Boy do I love getting all these councilmembers down on record on these issues! Watch how spicy these get!)

  1.  Area Median Income – what counts as low income?

Anytime something is “affordable”, we use the Austin-Round Rock Median Income as a yardstick for what “affordable” means.  But the median San Marcos resident earns way less than the median Austin-Round Rock resident, so “affordable” to San Marcos needs to be adjusted downward from “affordable” for Austin-Roundrock.  

For example, the median income for a family of 4 in Austin-Round Rock is $110K.  The median income for a family of 4 in San Marcos  is $42K. (The median for Austin alone is $75K).  We need affordability to be measured specific to San Marcos.

The vote: 
Everyone agrees with this! Add it to the list.

  1. Is Title Insurance is  mostly a scam? There’s a kernel of protection, and a whole lot of profit going to title companies who do extraordinarily little. Should we lobby for protections?

Some highlights from the Texas Observer article at that link:

  • Title insurance costs more in Texas than in any other state, about $1800 on average. 
  • The loss-ratio is how much insurance companies spend on payouts to customers. The Affordable Care Act set loss-ratios for medical insurance at 80-85%. The loss ratio for title insurance is 6%.
  • And then there’s this gem:

“But Texas doesn’t have a system that allows price competition, like Oregon, where title insurance usually costs between $300 and $600. Nor does it have a socialized system, like in Iowa, where it’s even cheaper. Texas has the worst of both worlds: a state-mandated system that forbids competition and sets rates higher than anywhere else in the country, with all the profit flowing into private pockets.”

Free market, baby!

Jane Hughson agrees with the critique, but particularly feels like we’re tilting at windmills here. It doesn’t get any traction. Not on the list.

(I know I’ve got at least one reader who works at a title company! Hi! Sorry to take an aggressive stance against your industry!)

  1. Should we lobby for extra money to support homelessness-related issues, like a continuum of care, transitional housing, and case management?

Apparently our local organization, the Homeless Coalition, does already work pretty closely with the Texas Housing Network. 

Max Baker points out some specific legislative possibilities, like addressing how redlining, credit scores, and background checks get used to exclude people from renting available apartments.  That part kind of gets ignored, though. They end up with just agreeing to pursue more funding for housing-related issues. 

The vote: 6-1.  So this will get added to the list.

Honestly, who could oppose lobbying for funding for people experiencing homelessness? Mark Gleason can! He doesn’t say why. (Shane Scott is absent, by the way.)

  1. Should we look at the impact of constitutional carry of guns, as it affects the rise in violent crime?

Max Baker notes that more and more states are loosening up their firearm regulations, and violent crime is on the rise, and wants some data on this possible correlation.

Mark Gleason gets very upset. Law-abiding citizens do not commit crimes!! That’s been proven!

Max Baker points out that anyone can get a gun, not just law-abiding citizens.  That’s kinda the point of constitutional carry.

Mark is pretty emotional on this point and flailing. He is very fired up over the wild notion that an endless supply of lethal weapons could end up being used in lethal ways.

Anyway, this doesn’t go anywhere.

The vote:
Yes: Alyssa Garza and Max Baker
No: Jude Prather, Saul Gonzalez, Mark Gleason, and Jane Hughson.

Jane Hughson says that she cares about this issue, but she just thinks it’s useless to go after issues this big. Max calls her apathetic.  It’s kinda rude, but she’s also a potential ally who is too timid to sign on to big issues.

  1. Police Accountability and Access to Records

Suppose you’re sitting in jail, and there’s police bodycam evidence that could exonerate you. Should you be able to see it? Should you be able to share it? In other states, you can.  When the issue is raised here, Chief Standridge says he’s constrained by Texas Law.

The vote: Should we take lobby for citizen access to bodycam footage?
Yes: Alyssa Garza, Max Baker, Saul Gonzalez
No: Jude Prather, Mark Gleason and Jane Hughson, who once again points out that she would if it weren’t futile.

Tie votes count as denials. So this does not make the cut.

  1. Abortion rights

Should San Marcos lobby for Texas to repeal its anti-abortion law?

Alyssa points out that there are a lot of city councils throughout the state to coordinate and work with. We would not be taking this on alone.

The vote:
Yes: Alyssa Garza and Max Bakers
No: Mark Gleason, Saul Gonzalez, Jude Prather, and Mayor Hughson.  

They offer mealy-mouthed dilutions, like “I’m pro-choice but can’t speak for the city!” (Mayor Hughson) and “It’s too complicated for 10 pm” (Mark Gleason) and “This is too divisive and complex” (Jude Prather).

After the vote, Jane says, “It’s too bad that the state legislatures won’t just go with what the majority of the people want,” and Alyssa mutters, “That doesn’t happen here, either,” and Max let out a guffaw.  I smirked.

  1. Pre-emption of local code: Vacant buildings

Vacant buildings are a nuisance and a waste of valuable space. They make downtown look sad and depressed.  There’s no business inside that contributes to the tax roll. They attract vagrancy and can require extra fire and police services, compared to if they were occupied. Can San Marcos charge owners of vacant buildings a registration fee that kicks in every six months or so that it sits vacant?

Jude suggests that we should just levy such a fee, but Max says that he has only found out-of-state cities which do this, so he suspects it’s not legal here. Hence something to either pursue, or lobby the state about.

Everyone likes this idea. 

  1. Another state pre-emption of local code: Texas State University

Texas State used to pay into our stormwater fund, like the rest of us do.  You may have noticed that they occupy a whole lot of pavement which sits uphill of a whole lot of town. 

One day, the board of regents asked what this funny-looking stormwater fee was doing on their balance sheets, and then they got mad about it. So they went to the state legislature, who agreed that they shouldn’t have to pay it anymore. 

(That’s how Jane Hughson explained it – I couldn’t find anything one way or the other in a quick google search.)

They also don’t pay for the fire department, police department, nor do they have to follow municipal regulations. (They do pay for wastewater services, and they do have their own police department, so there’s that.)

Mark Gleason and Saul Gonzales are on board with lobbying for them to pay for fire department service, but not stormwater.  Neither of them offer up a reason why they’d exclude stormwater fees.  I’m pretty sure they’re aware that there’s a flooding problem in town.  

Mayor Hughson agrees to both, despite saying she thinks it’s unlikely to go anywhere.

Alyssa supports both.

Jude abstains.

So this one will make the cut.

  1. The SMART Terminal:

I don’t really know what the SMART Terminal is, but it has something to do with the railroad line, north east of town.  Max says it’s no longer what it was originally envisioned to be, and he wants it removed from the list of lobbying criteria.

Jane Hughson agrees that it’s no longer what it was going to be, but still wants it left on the list of items that we lobby over in Austin.

Who knows. SMART Terminal stays, by a vote of 5-1.

THAT’S ALL OF THEM!  

It’s important to note that this is all preliminary. The real vote is next session. So any of this could get struck down, amended, or voted out.

Hours 4:00-5:08, 11/1/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 19: The Pick-a-Pet problem

This is a first reading, meaning nothing sticks until the final vote next time. 

First we get a quick background on the shelter, and their efforts to move towards no-kill, or at least less-kill. Listen: it’s always a big problem when the presentation is not provided to the public. It leads to me squinting and trying to figure out what the hell is going on in a graph like this:

Wow! Over the past eight blurry marks on the x-axis, we’ve improved six blurry marks on the y-axis! What a nice upward trend that is.   (Elsewhere they said that we’re currently at 92% live outcomes.)

So now we get to the proposed changes. Let’s take the main ones one at a time.

  1. The second time an animal has been in the shelter, they have to get spayed or neutered. So if you got your dog from the shelter, and they escape and get picked up, you’d be on the hook.

Gleason proposes changing this to the third time. Your pet gets out and gets picked up one time? Fine, but the next time, you’ll have to handle their spay/neutering.

The Vote:
Yes: Mark Gleason, Jane Hughson, Jude Prather, Max Baker, Saul Gonzalez
No: Alyssa Garza

2. Stray-holds for cats: how long should they hold your cat when they pick it up?

This conversation is incredibly confusing. I actually listened to this part twice, and then I went to the actual ordinance and I’m still confused.

First, this is only about cats. Cats do much worse at shelters – it stresses them out, and they’re susceptible to illness and disease. The old rule is that all cats get held for 5 days. After that, your cat can get adopted out or euthanized.

Based on the presentation: the new proposal is to break out different cases:
– Kittens under 3 months old are basically always from feral litters. Kittens don’t escape from homes when they’re that little. So the first proposal is no stray-hold for little baby kittens. They can just be adopted out. (Everyone is fine with this.)

– The next category is cats with traceable identification. Is there a tag, or a microchip? Can we get in touch with the owner? If so, we’ll hold the cat for five days, or three days after reaching out to the owner.

It sounded like this category includes any cat that appears to have an owner – does it have out-dated microchip? Has it been spayed or neutered? But I couldn’t tell for sure.

– The third category is cats without traceable identification, who are healthy. These cats would get spayed and neutered and returned to wherever they got picked up. That way, a healthy outdoor cat does not languish in a shelter. This is Trap/Neuter/Return, or TNR. (Here’s a link I found explaining TNR more thoroughly. It sounds good.)

This third category is the contentious category. Should we hang on to cats without identification for five days?

Based on what’s in the ordinance:

– That third category, cats without traceable identification, are called Community Cats. Feral cat colonies are fine. You’re allowed to feed and love your colony of community cats. Hopefully they’re gradually picked up and spayed and neutered, and any that are injured or sick need to be tended to, and kittens should be removed for adoption.

It does not talk about TNR at all. The presentation did a little, but I don’t see it in the ordinance. What the ordinance says is that visually healthy cats should not get picked up in the first place.

So what happens if your cat gets picked up, despite that? The presentation certainly made it sound like it could happen!

According to the section on Impoundment, cats with no traceable identification will not be held for 5 days. So what happens to them? It doesn’t say! It does not say that we’re implementing TNR and will return them.

What happens to the other cats, the ones with ID? If you don’t pick up your cat, there’s a few options:
– it gets put up for adoption,
– transferred to a different rescue organization,
– fostered out
– euthanized
Nowhere does it say that your cat may be returned to where they found it.

Furthermore, here’s another problem: what happens when the line between community cats and pets gets blurry? Is your cat getting returned to where they found it, or adopted out/euthanized?

Mark and Alyssa are very concerned with a situation where someone is trying to slowly tame a stray cat, and has been putting food out for them, and befriending them, but hasn’t yet been able to catch the cat and take it to the vet for a check-up. If that cat gets picked up by the shelter, what happens?

Mark wants a 5 day hold for this pet, and it sounds like he believes that otherwise the cat will be immediately put up for adoption or euthanized. He never refers to TNR or returning the cat.

Alyssa also wants a 5 day hold. She did acknowledge that the speaker said the cats would be returned, but she was still troubled by this. So she is not on board with TNR. (I’m not sure why. Why would it be better for the cat to sit in a shelter for five days, over being returned to their familiar habitat?)

Here is my opinion: TNR is good, but the ordinance is very poorly written on this point. It should say explicitly which cats will get returned to where they’re picked up, which cats will be held for five days, and what happens to those cats at the end of the five days. TNR should be clearly stated in the Community Cat section, Impounded animals, and Disposition of animals. Right now, it’s written as though it will always be perfectly clear which cats are community cats and which cats are pets, and that bright line does not exist.

3. Finally we get to the big item: pet stores shall not sell cats and dogs unless they come from a shelter.  San Antonio has this ordinance, New Braunfels just passed this. It’s a thing that’s going around. 

The idea is that the USDA is supposed to visit breeders, and check for humane violations, but they’re massively underfunded and show up maybe once every few years.  Under the ordinance, you would still be able to buy a pure bred dog, but you have to buy directly from the breeder.  Apparently the American Kennel Club explicitly says that members shouldn’t sell their dogs to pet stores.

I cannot tell you how horrified Gleason is by this.  He starts at 4:31. 

  • He doesn’t think this will affect puppy mills.  It’s futile.
  • We’re trying to close down Pick-a-pet.
  • We’re trying to outlaw pure bred dogs.
  • We’re shutting down all breeders!!
  • When he was in High School, he saved his pennies and purchased a beloved pet for bird-hunting. You can’t believe how much he loved this dog.  His uncle has a sheep dog … for herding sheep!!
  • People should be allowed to buy a dog from a store!
  • Pet stores won’t have a functional business model.

He’s open to compromise: he wants a rule that pet stores can’t buy from any puppy mill with any infraction from the USDA.   Jude Prather is also on board with this.

It’s pretty easy to pick apart Gleason’s arguments, and mostly this occurred.  

  • Breeders can still sell pure bred dogs.
  • Buy your bird-dog and sheep-herder from the breeder. No one is stopping you.
  • PetSmart and other pet stores seem to do just fine selling supplies and not actual pure bred dogs and cats.
  • I believe you loved your dog, Mark. No one doesn’t believe you.

This was the most entertaining moment to me: Remember how the USDA may only get around to inspecting a puppy mill once every five years?

In response, Mark says, “If we don’t know anything about them, then they could be GOOD! We don’t know! Maybe they’re GOOD!”

Yes. Maybe they’re full of warm snuggles and blankies and rawhide bones. Those mean old activists just hate the snuggly love of a good puppy.  You figured it out, Mark.

I don’t want to come down too hard on Mark. I think he was very emotional, and channeling his emotions through nonsensical arguments. I think in his heart of hearts, he believes:

  • Puppy mills aren’t that big a problem
  • This is about outlawing pure bred dogs, and he loves pure bred dogs.

He’s wrong, though, and he cannot take in information to the contrary.

The vote: Do you want to stop pet stores sourcing puppies from puppy mills?
Yes: Alyssa Garza, Max Baker, Jane Hughson, Saul Gonzalez
No: Mark Gleason, Jude Prather.

There’s one last vote: delaying this part of the ordinance for a year, so that Pick-a-Pet has a chance to convert its business model.  That passes 6-0.

Again, all this has to be finalized at the next meeting. First readings are not the final story.

Hours 5:08-5:30, 11/1/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Finally! A lighthearted item!  

Item 22: You know how Kyle, Buda, and New Braunfels have these groovy signs introducing themselves to you?

We want one too!  And we have some TxDot money that’s begging to be used (on I-35).

City staff want feedback on some preliminary plans, so they offer up these ideas to council as a launching off point:

Here’s what council has to say:

First is Jude: They’re all nice! I don’t know if I could pick just one. They all look sort of similar. But YES!

Then Mark goes: Well, I can certainly pick! I love E. That one is the best. The depth, the motion…yes.

Next is Max: I kinda think the whole concept is dumb. My phone tells me when I get to a city.

(I tell you, writing this blog is so much fun.)  

Then Alyssa speaks: They’re all hideous. It looks like a retirement village.

And then Saul: Could we get a mermaid on it? Or a rattler? Or a bobcat? 

(Yes! How about a mermaid wearing a rattler, while riding a bobcat?)

Finally Jane: They’re all terrible. Those don’t look like river rocks. River rocks are smooth. Why would the river be floating up in the air like that?! The words “San Marcos” should be horizontal.

Everyone likes “established 1851”. Max points out that we could go way back, and use that we’re the oldest continuously inhabited place in North America.

They decide that staff will bring back something so innocuous and bland that when the city re-brands itself, it won’t clash with this milquetoast excuse for a sign.

So what’s the official Marxist take on city welcome signs? 

We could do a whole lot worse! Bring it back!!

Hours 0:00-0:56

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen Comment: the big topic is the humane pet shop ordinance, which is going to be coming back around, in January.  We saw this last year, with the Pick-a-Pet Problem.  It’s still a problem! Stay tuned.

Item 16: Meet Mystic Canyon:

The developers have agreed to run some sewage lines in a way that preserves a few heritage trees. 

Tuesday’s item was genuinely no big deal, but I figured we could have a brief explainer on Mystic Canyon, especially in light of the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone discussion (which is coming in the last part of the meeting).

So, Mystic Canyon? It was approved in 2018. Here’s how the vote went: 

(Pre-covid, the council members used to vote on little Jeopardy-click devices, so they couldn’t copy off each other’s answers.) So both your candidates for mayor voted yes, as did Saul.

And in fact, both Max Baker and Mark Gleason were on P&Z together at the time, so we also know how they voted (although P&Z did not use the little Jeopardy-clickers).

The P&Z Vote: Mystic Canyon should exist?
Yes: Mark Gleason (and also Kate McCarty, Lee Porterfield, and Jim Garber)
No: Max Baker (and also Angie Ramirez and Betseygail Rand)

In case anyone from the city staff reads this: your website lists Matt Mendoza as having voted at that meeting, which is nonsense because he only joined P&Z in 2022:

But here, you can watch the video – it’s Matthew Havriland that was on the committee back then.  Someone fix this, stat!  (The votes look screwy because that is a motion to deny. So “For” means deny, and “Against” means pro-development.) 

It’s not the sprawliest sprawl, but we still shouldn’t be developing over the recharge zone. More on the topic of the Edwards Aquifer to come.

…..

Item 15: I have no idea what’s going on here, for two reasons:

  1. Clearly there’s a lot of backstory.  Is this an Executive Session Secret?
  2. The item is an approval to say San Marcos does not consent, and then we denied it. 

Here’s the actual item:

We denied this by a vote of 6-0.  So the Hillert Tract gets their Crystal Clear water after all?  

My guess is that this was dealt with in Executive Session:

Sounds like someone got in trouble!  OooooOOO!   

So: what’s the Hillert Tract? I went down a short rabbit hole.  We acquired it in 2008. It shows up in Executive Session roughly yearly. It seems there’s some drama going on with Martindale. Finally I found a map, from 2014:

So it’s sort of next to Redwood, and next to the currently-controversial Riverbend development.

Side note: why are we drawing I-35 almost horizontally?! Check out the little compass in the top left. I mean, if that’s how you like to look at the world, knock yourself out.

….

Item 20:   This one is really important!  We have a board called the Economic Development Board of San Marcos, or EDSM.  

Here’s what EDSM does:

So the EDSM is supposed to look out for the best interests of the city. Then the city turns around and contracts things out to the Greater San Marcos Partnership, or GSMP.  GSMP is a nonprofit that wants to grow and groom the business community of San Marcos.  You can imagine – or at least I can – that what’ s best for the business community is not always aligned with what’s best for San Marcos.  

Last spring, Max pointed out that it is a conflict of interest for GSMP members to serve on EDSM.  If they’re on EDSM, they’re supposed to advise council on what’s best for San Marcos. But then, whatever they approve goes straight to GSMP. It’s not a great look.  

Now, GSMP is entitled to one non-voting representative on EDSM. The problem is people serving in at-large seats on EDSM who also happen to serve on GSMP. Max also made the point that this reduces the number of EDSM seats available for the rest of the community.

The issue got sent to committee, and the committee has agreed.  So tonight, they amended EDSM to say that members can’t also serve on GSMP.  This is great!

The business community is still relatively small, and we’re still drawing on the same pool for both committees, so clearly everyone still knows each other.  But one key to having an ethically-run city is not to create opportunities for temptation.  It’s good to put some daylight between these two groups.

Also, this is a great example by Max of the kind of small-but-good thing that progressives do differently at the local level. Put activists on city council, and they’ll do good things.

Hours 0:55-1:05

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 21: The other week we learned that we have a Sculpture Garden.  Now they want to go and upend things by renaming it as an Arts Park?!

via

I suppose I’ll allow it.

(The reason is to allow for artsy things besides just sculptures.)

…

Item 22: The other week we renamed that one alley “Boyhood Alley”. Now they want to go and allow all the alleys to be renamed after San Marcos-themed movies?!

Like perhaps “The Getaway“, filmed in San Marcos in 1972?

(That’s just upstream of Sewell Park, across Aquarena. You know, at Kerbey-Lane-not-the-Saltgrass-not-Joe’s-Crabshack-not-Pepper’s restaurant. This is a great list of stills from that movie, with their locations identified.)

Sure, why not.

Hours 0:55 – 1:26, and Council Workshop

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 23 plus Workshop:  Purple Pipe and the Edwards Aquifer.

You guys.  This was all so fascinating that I don’t know where to start. Half the reason I wanted to start this blog is that I don’t feel like I’ll retain anything unless I organize my thoughts well enough to explain them to someone else. 

The afternoon workshop is on the Edward’s Aquifer.  First off, Edward’s Aquifer is gigantic:

via

The green part catches all the rainfall. The blue part is all the porous caves and springs, where the aquifer is right at surface.  The tan part is the storage tank of the aquifer.

It’s a little weird, because you would think that those three parts – catching rain, rocky and porous, storing rain – would be stacked on top of each other, going towards the center of the earth.  You wouldn’t think that they’d be side-by-side on a map. Why would water flow from Kerrville to Uvalde?  But it does! Or so I’m told.

It’s kind of both:

Via

The left side of that picture is north, the center is San Marcos-ish, and the right part is south.  So underground, water really is flowing from Kerrville to Uvalde.

Next!  So, we were using the aquifer too heavily in the 70s and 80s, and water-people were getting nervous, projecting that we’d exceed capacity in the future.  During droughts, things would get scarce.  In the 1950s, the Comal dried up completely at one point, during a massive drought.  Water rights for surface water – lakes, rivers, etc – have been fought in the courts for a long time, but not for ground water (or at least not in Texas). So people were allowed to enforce caps on how much water you take from lakes and rivers, but no one was allowed to enforce a cap on how much water you pump from an underground aquifer.

So in 1991, the Sierra Club files a lawsuit against Texas, because of the endangered species in the San Marcos and Comal rivers.  And they won!  Texas was ordered to do something to guarantee that the water wouldn’t stop flowing into these spring-fed rivers.  And so the state legislature created the  Edwards Aquifer Authority. 

So the EAA has legal power to protect that quantity and quality of water in our river. That’s amazing! I got legitimately nerdy-emotional, contemplating the sheer amount of effort and science and coordination across different groups of people that goes into protecting our river.  

They do a lot:

  • They issue permits for who is allowed to use aquifer water. So San Marcos has a permit, TXST has a permit, etc.  There are only 2000 permits, total.  There are 2 million people on the aquifer, but only 2000 permits.
  • They cap the amount of water that can be by someone holding a permit. During drought, they force permit holders to reduce their usage.  (Apparently Drought Stage 1-5 refers to how much you have to reduce your usage. So Stage 1 means reduce by 10%, stage 2 by 20%, etc.)  As long as the EAA enforces these caps, your river is going to keep flowing.
  • They worry about water quality: contamination from abandoned wells, chemicals from firefighters putting out fires over the aquifer, about storing other things underground, besides water. (Like gas tanks for a gas station.) So they have programs in place for all these things.  They cap the amount of underground storage under the aquifer. If someone wants to open a new gas station, they’re going to have to buy storage credits from someone else who already has them. 
  • They’ve got a big research facility in San Antonio where they’re studying all these strategies so that they can say with certainty how much each intervention helps.

San Antonio has a program where 1/8th of every cent of their sales tax goes to counties in the west, to help them protect their aquifer.  So San Marcos really is not going at this alone! We’re the tip of a large network of scientists and environmentalists who are all coordinating their action to help preserve these rivers.  I somehow find that very reassuring. 

Next: we zoomed into San Marcos at the city level.

Zooming out:

Remember: 

  • green is the part that catches the water, 
  • blue is where the aquifer comes to the surface
  • tan is where water gets stored.

Zooming in: 

We have a lot of blue.  In total, San Marcos is about ⅓ inside the aquifer.

Zooming in to the green-blue boundary in particular:

Everything south of Bishop, or past Craddock on Old 12, or north on Lime Kiln road: all of that is extremely sensitive land.   It’s really important to fight these fights over La Cima, or Mystic Canyon, or wherever.

We actually only get about 7% of our drinking water from it.   The rest of our water comes from several different places, through a bunch of different organizations. We’re trying to diversify our sources, so that if one region gets hit by a drought, we still have other options. (It did occur to me that droughts aren’t that local. It’s not like we’re piping water in from New Orleans. Wouldn’t all our sources be hit by the same drought, if it lasted for a few years?)

Moving on! Did you know that San Marcos has a purple pipe program? 

Not like that, you dingbat.  Purple pipe is reclaimed water.  In other words, you flush your toilet, the water goes to the water treatment plant, and they get it fairly clean. Not clean enough to drink, but fairly clean.  Then they can either put it back in the river, or they can pipe it back out in specific Rattler-pride-hued pipes.  Then businesses can use it for landscaping and flushing toilets, so that we’re not using drinking water for these things.

Here is a map of the purple pipe in San Marcos:

The Kissing Tree golf course, the downtown landscaping, and some of the stuff at Texas State are all using reclaimed water.  That’s so great! 

We have the capacity to pump 5.5 million gallons of reclaimed water per day.  We’ve got it all contracted out, but they’re only using about a million gallons/day, so we need to renegotiate these contracts so that we can free up the rest of the water for use.

The water pressure is pretty terrible, apparently, enough so that it’s not really available for residential uses yet.  And there are concerns about double-piping neighborhoods, and some future plumber using the wrong water line for drinking water.  But these are being hammered out.  The future is now!

Hours 0:00-1:18, 10/3/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Explainer, Hour summaries

Items 15-16:  38.5 acres is being annexed and zoned.  La Cima is growing.  

I found myself wanting to do a deep dive on La Cima. How did we get here?  I thought maybe I could try to finally wrap my head around La Cima.  (I’d also like to do this for Whisper Tract and Trace.)

So La Cima was first approved in 2013, as Lazy Oaks. Most of the city’s online archives only go back to 2014 though, so I literally can’t find a map of the original parcel. It was 1,396 acres in size.

In 2014, it grows to 2,029.023 acres (and maybe gets renamed?) It looked like so:

That’s RR12 right at the entrance of the pink part, right where Old 12 meets new 12.

Basic stats, 2014:
– 2,400 houses
– 32.4 acres parkland
– 800 acres conservation
– 2,029 total acres

I think they actually start building houses in 2017.

The second amendment appears to be May 15th, 2018.  

Now it looks like this: 

So in 2014, that tan part – all residential houses – didn’t wrap around to the left of the conservation open space, and now it does. Plus they added apartment complexes. (I’m okay with the apartment complexes being added! I don’t like developing over the aquifer, but I don’t want it to be a cloister of wealthy people, either.)

Basic stats, 2018:
– 2800 dwelling units: old 2,400 houses + 400 new apartment units
– 35.6 acres parkland
– 791 acres conservation
– 2,029 old acres + 394 new acres = 2,423 total acres

In August of 2020, it grows again:

Adding that new pink part in the lower right hand side.

Basic stats, 2020:
– Still 2800 dwelling units
– 37.66 acres parkland
– 800 acres conservation
– 2,423 old acres + 129 new acres = 2,552 total acres

In November 2021, we added amended it to allow for the film studio. The plan seems to be for it to go in that new pink section on the lower right.

Of course, the fights weren’t until the following June, when everyone was super pissed about building on the aquifer. Listen: they are absolutely correct to be mad! It’s just that the fight wasn’t held at the correct time, legally speaking. By this point, City Council was just trading environmental protections for tax credits.

The funny thing is that the really big change came just one month earlier, and no one paid any attention.

This is in May, 2022, and it’s a pretty drastic change:

It jumped clear across RR12!!  That whole tri-colored bit on the upper right is brand new!

So what happened? A lot of housing was relocated. That light green piece in the upper left used to be residential, but now it’s conservation. So there are good parts and bad parts.

Basic stats, 2022:
– 4200 houses, 980 apartments
– 37.66 acres parkland
– 792 acres conservation 1227.8 = 2019.8 acres conservation
– 2,552 old acres + 1296 new acres = 3848 total acres

So: is this a good thing? 

I don’t know. It’s a complicated thing. There’s a lot more conservation, but a lot more building and living on the aquifer. I feel weird about it.

(Wasn’t I paying attention last May? Apparently not! I listened to the entire meeting and did not have a single thing to say about La Cima! You probably shouldn’t trust me very much.)

Also, not that much of it has actually gotten built yet. They’re chipping away at it.

So now we’re all up to speed on La Cima. So what actually happened last Tuesday?   A very a small bit, 38.5 acres, is finally getting annexed and zoned:

That pink square is my best guess of where it is.

Max Baker attempts to persuade the developer to use something water-friendly: either purple pipe or rainwater detention. He gets brushed off for both, in a slightly condescending way.

The vote:
Yes: Everyone except Max
No: Max

………………

Item 17: There’s an application to rezone 1.35 acres in the middle of Blanco Gardens.

 Here’s Blanco Gardens, and they want to rezone this pink square:

So really RIGHT in the middle of Blanco Gardens.  Aren’t there houses right there already?

Yes. This is a block full of houses, but it happens to have some undeveloped land interior to it, and the developer wants to add houses inside the block.

Some important details:

  • They can already develop it, SF6, which means single family housing with lots at least 6000 sq ft big.
  • They want SF4.5, single family housing with lots at least 4500 sq ft. 

So they can fit in more houses under SF4.5 Staff estimates that they could fit 8 houses at SF6, and 11 houses at SF4.5.

Other important details:

  • WE HAD A BIG FLOOD A FEW YEARS AGO, IN THIS EXACT NEIGHBORHOOD. And a few years before that. And a few years before that. Etc.
  • P&Z denied this request! So it would take 6 councilmembers to overturn it.

City council also denies it, 7-0, so that is that.  The developer can still build their SF6 houses if they want (and if they want to piss off the neighborhood).  

…

Item 19: Here is El Centro:

They’re good people!

The School Board officially gave that land to El Centro Cultural recently, and then came to find out that there’s a weird alley running through the school that still belongs to the city.

So we got a charming history of this alley – before SMCISD was SMCISD, it was the San Marcos Public Free School system.  Then in 40s, it spun off.  Gradually the city gave SMCISD bits and pieces of this land, through the 70s.  But there was still this one alley on the books (but never built).  

So we have officially abandoned the alley, which can then be given to SMCISD, which can then be given to the good people over at El Centro.

Hours 1:18 to 3:50, 10/3/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 20: Here are some current city ordinances:

1. City Council and P&Z members all fill out financial disclosure forms every year.

2. City Council has some caps on campaign finance:

– There is a cap on total fundraising: you can’t raise more than 50¢ per registered voter in an election cycle. (Mayor gets 75¢ per registered voter.)

– No donor can donate more than $500 to a candidate in an election cycle. Any donations over $300 trigger certain mandatory recusals for conflict of interest.

These were passed circa 2018. Since then, the Ethics Review Committee has looked these forms over and followed up with the person for clarifications/omissions/sloppiness.   However, that review is not part of their official duties.

Jane Hughson brings this up to formally add it to their duties. After all, we have these laws, someone had better be double-checking the forms, and so it might as well be the ERC.

Shane Scott dislikes the formula for the donation limit. It’s based on the number of registered voters, and Shane argues that voter registrations fluctuate substantially from year to year. 

This is true! If medical marijuana is on the ballot, you can register a whole bunch of college students, who then graduate in a few years.  Odd years have low turn out, presidential years have especially high turnout. Etc. (Now, it’s fair in the sense that all the candidates running for the same council seat have the same cap. But sure, between different council seats that come up for election in different years, the total will fluctuate.)

Anyway, good news! There is an easy fix: just take the average of the voter registration numbers over the past four years. Then every cycle always includes one presidential cycle and one off-presidential cycle contributing to their voter registration number.

Jude Prather says that the fundraising cap isn’t keeping up with the price to run a campaign.  In a way, this is true, but in a more important way, this is silly.   The point is to constrain the price tags of campaigns.

Suppose it works out that candidates are capped at $10K total contributions. And suppose further that it would be easy to spend $30K on signs and Facebook ads and whatever else.  In that sense, Jude is correct – the cap is not keeping up with the potential cost of the campaign.

But one big reason to impose a cap is to level the playing field.  You want candidates with poor friends to be able to wage a successful campaign against candidates with wealthy friends.  If everyone is capped at $10K, then great – spend it wisely.  Sure, you could spend more, but this is fair.  However, if the cap is $30K, and Matthew Mendoza can only raise $2k, then the cap serves absolutely no purpose. It hasn’t leveled the playing field at all.

Bottom line: if the cap doesn’t constrain the spending of the candidates with wealthy connections, then it doesn’t help the candidates without wealthy connections.

(But here’s the counterargument: name recognition is really expensive, and encumbents have a huge advantage. Capping the fundraising means it’s harder for an outsider to challenge an encumbent.)

Saul Gonzales asks, “how do voters get taken off the voter rolls?”

Jane Hughson gives him a detailed answer: in January of odd-numbered years, they send out a mailer to all voters.  If it bounces back as return-to-sender, they assume that the person no longer lives at that address, then the voter gets put in a limbo for a while.  In this waiting period, if the person tries to vote locally, they can hash it out. After a certain length of time, the person is removed from the voter roll. At any point, if they register and vote somewhere else, they’d be removed locally.*

Mark Gleason raises some other concerns with the cost of elections – what about voters that move out of town and mistakenly get city ballots? What about city residents who vote in Wimberly, so city candidates have to advertise at those polling locations?  I dunno, Mark.  What about them.  He also grumbles about election cycles being 3 years instead of yearly. 

In the end, this gets postponed till the end of November.  Basically, campaign finance laws are important, but there’s a fox-guarding-the-hen-house thing when Council tries to write its own laws.

The point of tonight’s discussion was that the Ethics Review Committee should keep an eye on these things, but that largely wasn’t discussed.

…

Item 24: Max Baker proposes a committee to talk about noise ordinances and alcohol permits.  

I guess it’s not surprising, but Council apparently gets a ton of noise complaints – people in neighborhoods mad about the downtown bars. (I always wonder how fussy people are being – are we talking about hearing music from downtown outside your house, or inside your house? Probably many complaints are completely valid, and others would make me roll my eyes.)

Either way, Max’s suggestion is that venues with repeat offenses could be required to have a sound board person when music is being played, to keep the volume in check.  

I know from watching P&Z meetings that determining decibels is a big problem for code enforcement and cops, but I’ve never understood why there isn’t a technological solution.  Surely there’s a little device that measures decibels and records the data to an app.  If an officer is called in for a noise complaint, then the business should have to produce decibel data for the evening, on the spot.  

On alcohol sales:  Max wants the committee to look at some things that lead to underage binge drinking downtown.  He gives the example of “bottle service”. I know people can buy a bottle of wine or champagne for their table, which they then can pour out as they please, but apparently you can also buy a 5th of vodka and then pour your own drinks.  (I was not aware of this, but it seems to be pretty much as Max describes.)

Mark Gleason thinks that venues have tightened up over the past ten years, which amuses me. As you’ve settled down, joined city council, and had a baby, it’s the venues that have tightened up?

Anyway, Alyssa Garza, Jude Prather, and Max Baker will be on the committee, plus a couple folks from P&Z.

…

Item 25: There’s a discussion about the eviction delay.  When Covid hit, San Marcos implemented a 3-month eviction delay. We’ve discussed this here before.

Today’s agenda is just for a discussion, but it ends up being a rather thoughtful discussion, and I’m not being sarcastic. Council did well.

Alyssa Garza starts off by noting how poorly the implementation has gone: landlords have strong armed tenants into moving out without going through the actual legal process.  Having an eviction on your record prevents you from being able to find anywhere to rent, and so tenants will do anything to avoid this.  Therefore many tenants aren’t being given the full 90 days to recoup their back rents. 

Shane Scott asks about people abusing the system: are they just using their three free months, skipping out on the rent, and then getting three free months at the next apartment, over and over again? (Oh, Shane. Please.)

The answer: no, they’re not. Getting evicted seriously wrecks your ability to get another place to live.

Mark Gleason argues that landlords are missing out on 7-8 months rent by the time an entire eviction plays itself out, and that dragging out the inevitable is bad for both tenant and landlord.   (I don’t know if that 7-8 months bit is accurate or not. I’m sure it occasionally is, but other landlords definitely kick out tenants on much shorter notice.)

It is true that landlords can get screwed over by tenants. But ultimately, landlords have far more power over tenants than tenants have over landlords. It’s an asymmetric power imbalance, and tenants are way more vulnerable than landlords. Therefore our job is to shore up protections for tenants.

Several people make the point that the Covid emergency is over, and it’s time to segue into a permanent solution.  I think this is correct: it’s time to look at permanent protections for tenants from abuses of power by landlords. (Evictions are part of this, but so are unsafe living conditions, loss of privacy, illegal rate hikes, and so on.)

Primarily, we need a well-funded tenants’ council, with affordable or free lawyer access.  In my fantasy, I would pay for that with a tax on rental properties. (Will that cost get passed onto tenants? Of course, but I can’t think of any other way to fund this.)

One last part of this: underlying this discussion is a lack of close, affordable housing.  If it were easy to find an acceptable place to move, then the power dynamics of landlords and tenants would be hugely transformed.

As I always say, we need some things:

  1. An ongoing, updated inventory of apartment complexes, broken out by rental cost.
  2. An ongoing estimate of the population of San Marcos, broken out by income level.
  3. An estimate of how many units are approved to be built over the next few years.

We’ve got to know how much housing we need, and then we need a plan to build it.

But also, go forth and fight for a tenants’ council, with a lawyer! We need that too.

* I just deleted a line – I thought Saul responded rudely to Jane. But I went back and listened again just now, and I misheard him. Sorry for the misunderstanding!

Bonus: New City Hall, some day!

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

So, the city is in a bind, because the state passed a law that you can’t borrow money to build your city hall. (Unless you get voters to approve a bond.) Our city hall is 50 years old, and staff and council constantly say how inadequate it is.

via

So city staff presents two vague plans:

(That’s a screenshot from the workshop. I couldn’t find a packet.)

The plan on the left is a bunch of new buildings on the same site as the current City Hall. The plan on the right has city hall moved across Hopkins, between the library and the dog park.

Funding is tricky, because voters are unlikely to approve a bond project for a new City Hall. So there are some creative ways to fund it, and they’ll probably kludge together a bunch of different solutions. Basically, you tie in a bunch of different purposes and get a lot of organizations to share the cost.

Max Baker and Jude Prather ask staff to consider thinking about a downtown site. The current Hays County Courthouse was built maybe 10-12 years ago. Before that, they used the strip mall that is currently Industry and Aquabrew. And that building, before it was the Hays County Justice Center, had been the old HEB.

Guys. GUYS. I was trying to find a photo online of the old Justice Center, and coming up empty. Then I recalled that I personally took some photos of it, a long time ago.

I used to call it the Supermarket of Justice:

I took that photo back in 2008, back when I was a lower case marxist.

But now I’m a big Marxist. I’ve got a blog, see? (I’m SO pleased that I was actually able to locate those old photos.)

Back to the point. In the days of the Supermarket of Justice, there was a large population of daytime employees in downtown. When the county employees all moved out to Stagecoach, the downtown became empty during the day. It has not quite ever recovered.

So putting City Hall downtown would put a serious number of employees using our restaurants and the fabric of downtown on a daily basis. It would definitely be more expensive, but maybe be worth it.

Saul and Jane are on the side of “Keep it cheap, keep it by the parks.” Max, Jude, and maybe Alyssa and maybe Mark are potentially interested in moving it downtown? I’m intrigued by a downtown city hall. But I do not want us to sell off the current land – surely we can find a quality civic use for it.

(You know what made me sad? When the Government Records department vacated southeast corner of Hopkins and Guadalupe. I’m a softie for public works.)

PS: I also took a few more photos, back in 2008:

There was a church on I-35 that sold clawfoot bathtubs:

right by Riverside Drive. I called it The Clawfoot Bathtub Church, for obvious reasons.

With this menacing Daffy Duck out front.

(I can’t figure out how Daffy is not visible from the first photo, since I would have taken both photos on the same day?! Maybe hidden behind the sign?)

And lastly, our beautiful river, doing what it does best:

being beautiful.

There is one photo that I did not take, and I regret it so much. Back then, the Chamber of Commerce was in the same building as now, on CM Allen, but it had a different sign. The font on the sign was the most ridiculous Mr. Rogers font.

In my memory, it looked something like this:

Maybe with the S, M, and C’s being even more swooping and absurd?

It looked very un-businesslike, and I miss it. If anyone has a photo of it, it would make me so happy.

Hours 0:00-2:00

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Items 20-21: The ’22-’23 yearly budget.

Last time, we did a deep dive. Here is the executive summary:

Option A: Drop the property tax rate to 59.3¢ from 60.3¢. On average, each household saves $24 for the year. Budget is $700,000 less.

Option B: Keep the property tax rate at 60.3¢. Use the extra $700,000 to pay for six new public safety employees, split up as four fire-fighters and two police officers.

Mayor Hughson, Jude Prather, Shane Scott, and Mark Gleason are all Option B. They all cheer for public safety.

Max Baker, Alyssa Garza, and Saul Gonzalez are all Option A.

Max and Alyssa both represent constituents who are highly skeptical of cops. (hi!) Their basic argument is that more cops does not automatically mean more public safety.

Saul’s reason is different: he is unwilling to put the $24 increase on struggling home owners. He shares that his mother worked at Texas State as a maid when he was growing up, and she’d have to go to financing companies to cover her taxes. His sympathy lies with the most struggling home owners.

The Vote: Should we adopt the budget with the extra $700K?
Yes: Mayor Hughson, Jude Prather, Shane Scott, and Mark Gleason
No: Max Baker, Alyssa Garza, and Saul Gonzalez

That was so fast! So we’re done? Ha, no.  We’re never done.  But this time, we’re really not done.

Here’s the problem: the tax rate is a separate vote from the budget. Aaaaaaaannnnd…by Texas state law, the tax rate must pass with a 60% majority. Council needs 5 votes now, to establish the 60.3¢ tax rate. And of course, there were only four “yes” votes above.

Either Max, Alyssa, or Saul has to flip to “yes”, or Council has to go back and undo the budget they just approved.

So now we dig into the deeper arguments, from SMPD Chief Standridge and Fire Chief Stephens.

Chief Standridge’s argument is basically this:

  • There are a lot of public safety things we can do without more cops, and we’re doing them. (I went over this last time, here.)
  • You need cops for in-progress, violent 911 calls. There is no public safety alternative. You just need cops for that.  We don’t have enough.  I need officers specifically to respond to violent-in-progress-911 calls. 

Max and Alyssa both concede the first point. They both praise his efforts to be an ally to progressives. He’s worked hard to form this allegiance, and they are right to recognize it.

For this one, narrow context (responding to in-progress-violent-911-calls), I do want SMPD to hire extra cops. I want faster response times to these calls. Standridge says they’re around 8.5 minutes long, and it should be 5 minutes.

Max and Alyssa’s other points are much weaker:

  • Max argues that it’s hypocritical that cops were so indifferent to safety when it came to wearing masks during covid, but now they need more cops. This is just irrelevant. Yes, cops should have worn masks, and yes, cops died unnecessarily of covid. Either way. right now, we need cops to answer 911 calls.
  • Alyssa argues that it’s irresponsible to pay for more personnel when we’re doing such a miserable job reaching out to our most vulnerable citizens for feedback and conversations. This is also true, but you can apply it to absolutely any proposal. Government would grind to a halt if we held it to that standard. Public outreach to the most vulnerable citizens is incredibly important, but also incredibly hard.

Chief Standridge says that San Marcos is more dangerous than Georgetown, Kyle, New Braunfels. There’s something called the Violent Crime Index, which is the number of violent crimes per 10K residents. Here’s how we stack up:

Georgetown: 12.4
Kyle: 17.4
New Braunfels: 24.5
San Marcos: 53.5
Statewide: 44.4

Max and Alyssa both question the methodology of that index. But I don’t think their criticisms hold water. I can believe that this statistic is shoddy or inflated, but whatever problems it has, it’s going to affect all those cities, not just San Marcos. It wouldn’t make San Marcos look specifically worse in comparison.

Fundamentally, Max and Alyssa are never going to vote for more cops, because they see it as betraying their constituents. That is fine!

But we still have to pass a budget, and Saul isn’t budging, either.

Next up: Fire Chief Les Stephens.

Fire Chief Les Stephens sounds like he’s about to quit. In a nutshell,  “I really resent having to grovel in front of you all. You make me grovel every year. We’ve been underfunded since I took over 13 years ago. I used to think the old chief wasn’t good at his job, but now I realize you put him in that position. I will not be groveling here next year.”

Which brings us to the most absurd moment of the evening, at 1:39:00. Saul Gonzalez attacks Chief Stephens on the flimsiest of pretexts, and then Saul just doubles down and digs in his heels. It just keeps going. It’s so bizarre and inappropriate.

Saul asks Chief Stephens about a $45K charge for landscaping, a few years back. Chief Stephens answers that they do their own landscaping, and that the contract is soil and mowing, and the costs are on par with the rest of the city buildings.

Saul says – and this is a quote – “I just want to know what you value. What’s more important? More fire personnel, or keep your grass looking really nice?” Chief Stephens is like, “Facility maintenance is a council priority. You all literally make me.” Saul cuts him off, saying, “Well, I don’t want to pay $45K for that.”

But Saul is not done! Next, Saul asks if they get fancy firetrucks with bells and whistles, and Stephens is like, “No. Mid-range. Like you all told me to get.”  

Jane admonishes Saul for not asking those questions back at the time, and Saul says he did. (If Saul did, it was super out of character for him.)

It’s very weird to see Saul being such a jerk!

Actually, that’s not quite right. Saul seems is acting like someone who is running for re-election, and hasn’t said a word in three years, and is now trying to say a whole lot of words. Way too many words.

Detour over!

So here we are: Either Max, Alyssa, or Saul has to flip to “yes”, or we go back to the old budget.

It’s time to vote. Drum roll …Saul reiterates that he’s looking at the budget hard, but that he’ll change his vote, and support the 60.3¢ rate. “But I’m going to keep an eye on you guys!” he says ominously.

The Vote:
Yes: Mayor Hughson, Jude Prather, Mark Gleason, Shane Scott, and Saul Gonzalez
No: Alyssa Garza and Max Baker

The budget has passed.

For the rest of the night, LMC relentlessly teased Saul about that line – “I’m going to keep an eye on you guys!” – every chance she got. And I enjoyed it every time.

One final note, for the wonkiest of municipal nerds

Before the first vote, Max Baker asked why he hasn’t heard about his question on the appraisal lawsuits over MLS data.   Max has brought this up many times. Based on this, I assumed that the appraisal district was being sued for artificially inflating home prices. I assumed that the appraisers aren’t allowed to use MLS data to appraise houses, because it would be unfair to home owners, and now they were being sued for it.

Jane Hughson replies that she did get a response from the appraisal people, and she reads it on the spot.  It says, more or less, “It was legal for us to use the methods that we used.”

Max gets frustrated that she hadn’t asked them the specific question he wanted to know: “Are they being sued for using MLS data?”

Jane Hughson just goes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

The thing is, the letter does answer Max’s question. The answer is, “Maybe we’re being sued, maybe not, but we’re on firm legal ground.”

So finally I went and looked up the lawsuit. It’s not about appraisals being too high.   It’s about MLS being private data. The MLS people are suing because they don’t want the appraisal district to use their data. 

There’s just no smoking gun here, and not one that benefits the community in any way that I can discern.