Category: Hour summaries

Hours 3.5-4.5, 4/5/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Items 17 and 19 are both about affordable housing, in different ways.

Item 17: Extending the Covid Disaster Declaration, and whether to keep the 3 month eviction delay ordinance.

On the Disaster Declaration: Keep it, because it makes us eligible for funding.  (But also, there actually could be another Covid wave. Right now, risk is low, and we should take our masks off and enjoy normal life. But the winds could shift again, and we’d have to respond to that.)

On the Eviction Delay: currently it takes 3 months to evict someone.  According to the Justices of the Peace, the eviction rate has stayed roughly steady pre-covid to covid.  The issue is whether we should go back to normal. (What is normal – evictions on demand? One month grace period? I don’t actually know.)

The argument in favor is that this costs landlords the rent money that they’re entitled to, and we’re clearly back in a healthy job market, so any Covid hardship should be over. The counterargument is that the Emergency Rental Assistance program has been an absolute shitshow – thanks, Hays County! – and people need it, but haven’t been able to get it. Furthermore, evictions lead to homelessness.

This is true and well-documented.  There are two main categories of homeless people – first, the visible homeless, with mental illnesses. These are sometimes called chronically homeless. This is who most of us think of when we think of homeless people. The other group is the temporarily homeless.  This group is much more invisible. These are people who may have been living a fairly stable life, but they were financially precarious, and then they were hit with one or several events, and now things are in a tailspin.  The eviction is an outsized, disproportionate consequence for the bumps in the road that led to it. It’s unsafe, unstable, extra-expensive, and it then takes years for people to recover some financial stability, if ever. It’s traumatic for children, and there are often children involved. (Traumatic for the adults, too.)

The problem is so much bigger than just the three month eviction delay.  We need a universal standard of living. We need housing guaranteed for all.  

Side note on housing:  The federal government used to build a massive amount of low income housing. Somewhere I read that in some cities in the ’70s, they were building ~200-300K units of housing every year. In the ’80s, we mostly switched to Section 8 vouchers, which meant that no new housing was being built by the federal government.  Production of cheap housing plummeted. People on Section 8 vouchers now have to compete with everyone else for housing.  All of a sudden, affordable housing became a limited resource, and then it became scarce.  The free market has not created a glut of cheap housing.  The government needs to build it.

Now, there were tons of problems with the federal low income housing, largely because of racism.  Buildings were not maintained and kept safe, and when you have a lot of people of color living in a rundown, dangerous area, society declares it to be a slum.  But the answer is to fix federal housing and pay to do it correctly, not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

So back to the 3 month eviction delay:  It would not be a problem to evict someone if they could move right into a safe, free, well-maintained, basic apartment.  It also would not be a problem if there was not a five year waiting list to get a Section 8 housing voucher. 

Believe it or not, I am actually sympathetic to landlords on this one, as well.  They’re still responsible for the mortgage every month. But the stakes are so much more dangerously high for the tenant than the landlord.  

Given how disastrous evictions are for tenants, and given that there is a huge pot of money that needs to be handed out, we should keep the 3 month delay in place while we work to connect tenants to the money. This also benefits landlords! If your tenant gets rental relief, then you get paid.

(Do I need to say that these arguments were all stated most clearly by Alyssa Garza? Yes, I should give credit where credit is due. She does a great job laying out the situation. In particular, she wants the city to help residents can get through the Emergency Rental Assistance program.)

Lastly: being a landlord comes with risk.  Being a business owner comes with risk. Being a bank and lending money comes with risk.  In different ways, these entities make money off of other people’s labor. If you eliminate the risk, then you just want to get richer by virtue of being rich in the first place.  Nice gig if you can get it, but very antithetical to this Marxist’s sense of fairness. (Of course not all landlords are rich, and not all business owners are rich. But they are better off than the people being evicted, right?)

In the end:
Keep: Alyssa Garza, Jude Prather, Max Baker, Jane Hughson, Saul Gonzalez
End: Shane Scott, Mark Gleason

(The four who voted to keep all want more data on evictions and have sympathy for landlords. It’s a hard issue.)

Item 19: Also a housing issue. Right now, we have a ban on more than two unrelated people living together. Should we increase that to three people? Or more?

Historically, San Marcos hates its college students.  And to be fair, historically Texas State was a massive party school.  So the stereotype is that your neighbor will be a rental house with 15 college students who throw keggers every weekend and puke in your bushes.  The idea is to prevent these students from living together.

(I actually have a theory that Texas State is much less of a party school than it was twenty years ago.  Rising admission standards, higher level of economic anxiety within the student body, and fewer slap-happy white kids, for lack of a better term. It’s been a long time since we had an incident like the drunk girl who had a DUI driving her toy Barbie Jeep around campus.)

There are SO MANY reasons that this occupancy restriction is a terrible policy.

  1. These bans are very classist and racist in effect, even if ostensibly the intent was anti-college students.
  2. You should write your policy to address the problem you want to solve. If giant parties and noise and trash are the problem, then you’ve got a code enforcement problem. No one actually cares if the people throwing the party are siblings or nephews or whatever.  (Max Baker makes this point.)

We look for workarounds – like the occupancy restriction – because code enforcement is hard. Right now, we have two code enforcement problems: we need to hire more code enforcement staffing, and we need to take on landlords.  Unless you can penalize landlords, they will never care that their property has become a nuisance. Until we have a well-functioning, complete rental registry, landlords can obscure their identities and avoid penalties.

3. The occupancy ban is totally unenforceable, which means that it is violated all the time, and enforced selectively.  When someone has an ax to grind with their neighbor, they can get them via this statute.  If a neighbor has a legit complaint, then deal with the legit complaint. This just invites capricious and biased enforcement.

4. Fundamentally, we need more housing.  People need to be able to double up and triple up, without fear of the law.  However, this ordinance is so broadly ignored that I doubt repealing it would actually open up much housing. So while this is the focus of the debate, it’s also sort of the least important reason.

I believe Alyssa Garza brought the item to the agenda.

There are a couple of sub-debates:

  • Would raising the limit to 3 help?
  • What if we required a conditional use permit? (CUP)
  • What if it had to be owner-occupied? In other words, if you own the home, you can rent out a bedroom, but not if you rent?
  • What if some Dallas parents buy a house for their college kids? Are the college kids considered “owner-occupied” and then allowed to have more unrelated people? I cannot believe how much traction this one gets, because college kids partying was ostensibly the whole problem.

Several times this evening, Jude Prather appears to be very responsive to the kinds of arguments that Alyssa Garza puts forth.  Both of them deserve credit – Alyssa for explaining herself patiently, over and over again, and Jude for listening with an open mind, and hearing what she’s saying. 

Saul Gonzalez and Mark Gleason are very opposed to any change. They both believe fervently in the destruction wrought by these massive house parties, and 8-10 cars parked all over the lawn.  My dudes: we are talking about three unrelated people.  Not 8-10. Three unrelated people most likely do not have a boatload of cars.

Max Baker and Jane Hughson are annoyingly cautious about this.  They want it to be owner-occupied, which basically means that old folks can rent out their kids’ bedroom, once their kids are long gone, to help offset the property taxes.  This is just the lamest little situation to restrict your attention to.  They also want it to perhaps require a CUP.

What’s even worse is that they’d consider it “owner-occupied” if a college student is living in a house that their parent owns.  This is purely symbolic, because there has never been an actual rich kid who has restrained themselves over this rule, but the idea is completely inequitable and infuriating. Weren’t these the kids that we were scared would throw the massive keggers?

Alyssa Garza points out the classism and racism inherent these proposals. Who exactly has generational wealth? Who owns homes? Who can navigate a CUP process? Whose daddy buys them a house for college?

Mayor Hughson hems and haws, and ultimately wants community feedback. Unfortunately, this is a terrible idea. You do not consult the community when racism and classism are involved, because hoards of people will happily tell you how racist and classist they are. This will invite all the NIMBY-types to come out in droves, and generate the false impression that we are being terrorized by keggers in San Marcos. 

(Max Baker does point out plenty of new builds have no residency restrictions.  This needs to be written carefully, lest we impose new residency restrictions where they currently don’t exist.)

The vote has several parts:
– Should we move it up to 3 unrelated people?
– Should it require a conditional-use permit (CUP)?
– Should it be limited to owner-occupied homes?
– If so, should college students in Daddy’s house count as owner-occupied?

Shane, Jude, Alyssa: Yes on 3. No restrictions.
Max: Yes on 3. In the historic district, owner-occupied with CUP.
Saul: Only owner-occupied with CUP. College kids count.
Mark: Only owner-occupied with CUP. No on college kids.
Jane: I can’t decide without talking to people in the community.

In the end, this was just a preliminary discussion. Staff will draft something raising the limit to 3 unrelated people, and bring it back.

Lobbying Ordinance Workshop, 4/5/22 prequel.

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

The lobbying ordinance has been in the pipeline since 2017. The current iteration of this proposal came up last June. Then it was postponed until July. Then it was postponed until November. Then finally it came up for discussion again in February. Then it was postponed to have a workshop. Basically it’s been a war of attrition on whether or not this thing will get passed.

Mayor Hughson shows up and proposes that the ordinance be restricted to just developers. This is warmly received by most of the council. Max Baker is furious. Alyssa Garza states that she wants to talk to constituents and see how they feel about it.

I am curious to know who exactly is omitted under this restriction? Certainly SMPOA and the Firefighters Union would be let off the hook, although we have a rough idea who they’d be in with. And probably organizations we like, like SMRF. From a lefty point of view, who should I be concerned about?

Still, this is much better than nothing. Rezonings, tax break agreements with the city (things like 380 agreements, TIRZ, PDDs, PIDs, and probably some other acronyms), running services out to businesses in the ETJ (the land surrounding San Marcos), etc: these would all be documented, and this is where the shadiness could easily occur.

There was an offhand comment about a city employee committing some offense during the Lindsey Hill proposal. I have no idea what that was referencing, and I’m curious to know more.

Quick primer on Lindsey Hill: Lindsey Hill is the old Lamar school building. Coming from downtown, if you turn right from Hopkins onto Old 12, a few blocks down you pass an old rundown, fenced off school. Circa 2015, developers bought it from SMCISD with plans to turn it into student housing. The historic district mobilized and shut that shit down hard. However, the developers – from Philadelphia, I think? – hadn’t gotten a rezoning contingency on the purchase, so they’ve just been stuck with the property ever since, unless they’ve managed to sell it at a major loss. Either they’re bleeding money, or they’re waiting for P&Z and council to turn over and become more sympathetic. Or both!

Hour 1, 3/23/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen Comment: Mostly on Item 26, expanding the criteria for qualification as a designated historical site. Everyone is in favor. One speaker spoke eloquently about Pauline Espinoza, who was a local public figure and business owner back in the 1930s, and is now getting the Rec Center named after her.

There was a presentation on some early budget prep work for 2022-2023; none of the councilmembers reacted in any noticeable way. There was a snafu involving SMPD’s overtime budget – basically they’d been budgeting for 1 1/2 time as though it were 1/2 time, and now it would cost $600k to fix the issue. To me, it seemed like the kind of unfortunate-but-honest error that comes from having high turnover in your city office. But Council raked the staff member over the coals a little bit for it.

The City’s strategic plan for the next 12-36 months is being discussed. It looks like apartment-renters will get a CONA rep at CONA meetings, which is great.

(If I were making a wish-list for a strategic plan, I’d put a tenant’s council with a city lawyer to assist renters on the list. Just saying.)

Hours 2-3.5, 3/23/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Jude Prather and Shane Scott brought in three measures:
1. There need to be some sort of time constraints when an item runs too long.
2. Rules of decorum need an update
3. All city council members should show up in person, instead of zoom.

Some context: Everyone understands that these are targeting Max Baker. The recent debate over the lobbying ordinance is looming large in everyone’s mind. (And Max is the only one still zooming in from his home.)

The crux of the debate is this: Max gets into arguments from the dais. One side interprets him as being rude, repetitive, combative, and violating professional norms, like committing personal attacks. Moreover, they want to prevent him from doing this.

The other side says that these interpretations are fraught and subjective. Furthermore, the urge to shut Max down is part of a long tradition of how people in power stay in power. It perpetuates the status quo if you silence anyone who doesn’t fit right in to the existing power structure. (This is correct.)

Now first, every communication has two layers:
1. a surface layer – your tone, your word choice, your mannerisms
2. a deeper structure – the actual content you’re trying to communicate

These proposals are all attacking Max on the surface level, and trying to police his tone, word choice, and mannerisms. They are not taking issue with his ideas. This is a very old tactic – you focus on someone’s tone, and then you don’t have to engage with the content. Historically, requirements for the surface level (“professionalism”) were used to prevent anyone besides old white dudes from participating, unless they pandered to the old white dudes. Accusing someone of being unprofessional allows you plausible deniability – you weren’t against their ideas, but they were being so unprofessional!

Here is the utter hypocrisy: These three discussion items are themselves an example of a polished, professional surface layer – all Jude and Shane did was submit items for a policy discussion! Superficially, it looks like they are seeking a return to collegiality.

It’s the deeper structure that’s the problem. Targeting a single colleague like this is rude and counterproductive. If you have a problem with a colleague, you talk to them, and then try mediation or bring in a third party. You don’t blast a memo out to the company with ostensibly neutral rules that happen to apply very specifically to your nemesis.

Jude and Shane cloaked their attacks on Max by putting it into policy proposals. They want to crack down on overt rudeness, but then run wild with stealth rudeness embedded in these three proposals.

Finally: Trying to shut Max down is absolutely wrong. And it is also true that sometimes Max can be very frustrating. But other times, he’s the passionate champion of values I hold dear. People are complex.

Before I sum up the councilmembers, let me list some of my burning thoughts:

  • Why do our council meetings last for 6+ hours? It’s not because Max is an intense speaker. What happens in bigger cities?
  • It was implied several times – mostly by Max and Alyssa Garza – that off-camera, councilmembers say plenty of rude things, but then play nice for the camera. Certainly plausible, but it’s hard to interpret what’s going on, from the outside.
  • You know what really wasted everyone’s time during the lobbying debate? The fact that Shane Scott managed to get everyone to postpone it for the umpteenth time. There are plenty of polite ways of wasting everyone’s time. Very professional.

Onto what was actually said:

Jude Prather: Kind of conciliatory, did not say much.

Shane Scott: Forgot he was even there.

Mayor Hughson: Fairly problematic in this conversation. She brings an absolute turd of a proposal, where she would ding anyone who personally attacks anyone else. If they persisted, and enough councilmembers agreed, they could be ejected and forfeit their vote on the issue. She tries to define personal attacks, and goes off the deep end with subjective language about viciousness, repetitiveness, and smirks.

She cannot stop interrupting Max Baker. He even requests that “No interruptions” be considered as an explicit rule of decorum, and she says, “No, I am not going to stop interrupting you when you say something factually wrong.” She may be correct that Max has said something factually wrong, but she’s shooting herself in the foot by interrupting him as often as she does.

Alyssa Garza: Consistently saves this council from itself. She explains about respectability politics and tone policing, and gets everyone on board with some cultural responsiveness training from a high quality consultant.

Mark Gleason: Mostly fine. He stands strongly opposed to any kind of time limit on discussions, and does want councilmembers to attend in person. He makes an earnest plea for the humanizing parts of being together in person, breaking bread together, etc.

Max Baker: Hard to summarize, since he was the subject of the entire conversation. He points out that anger and repetition are rhetorical techniques, and that they are trying to change how he delivers his words. He does correctly point out that we already have “calling the question”, which ends debate on an item and moves it onto a vote, and so time limits aren’t really needed.

He also tells Mark to fuck off (not in so many words) with his plea for humanity, and says to Mark, “The last time I saw you, you told me that I’m a fruitcake, and that I needed to skip off.” Max and Mark get snippy with each other over the things that were said in the course of campaigns. It got heated.

Saul Gonzalez: Silent per usual.

In the end:
– Everyone is on board with a Facilitated Retreat, run by someone who can offer cultural awareness and responsiveness mediation.
– the idea of time limits is discarded in favor of judicious use of calling the question.
– Max Baker and Jude Prather will get together and come up with a proposal to govern councilmembers zooming in to meetings and executive sessions.

Hour 3.5-4.5, 3/23/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

This last hour was spent on how City Council evaluates its appointees.

First off, there are only four. This isn’t a broad discussion on city employees in general. They are the municipal judge, the city clerk, the city manager, and…one other that I’m forgetting. The important one here is the city manager.

Clearly there was friction between the former city manager, Bert Lumbreras, and city council. From the outside looking in, it’s kind of impossible to know what was going on. Was he being given monstrously large tasks, and insufficient staff or budget? Was he communicating this back and proactively helping to shape the tasks into things more do-able? Was he just ignoring requests that he didn’t like, and letting them fall by the wayside? The interim city manager, Stephanie Reyes, certainly seems smoother during the meetings, and less quick to tell the council why their idea is a nonstarter.

Anyway, performance evaluations are being altered to be outcomes-driven.

The debate hinged on one aspect of this: should the full staff-evaluation be included in the city council packet, easily visible for the entire city to see? Or should only a summary be included?

Max Baker was arguing that the entire evaluation should be in the packet. Since the entire evaluation is available under FOIA, he argued, let’s not paywall it. Let’s be transparent about why someone deserves a merit raise, so that constituents can see the basis for these decisions.

Mayor Hughson felt this was a terrible idea, for the employee’s sake. That it’s bad management for one employee to see another employee’s assessment. Mark Gleason’s concern was that it might shape how forthright councilmembers can be when they write their evaluation, if they know it will be going public.

I do think this is a tough call, and that both sides have merit. These are private citizens. There is a giant difference in visibility between putting a review behind a FOIA paywall and publishing it in the council packet.

I think I’m siding with Mayor Hughson and Mark Gleason. Extreme cases make bad policy. Egregious situations should be dealt with individually. (But if I’m reading between the lines, the other problem is that half the council phones it in and rubberstamps the evaluations, and so the evaluations don’t accurately reflect the things that were frustrating about the employee.)

However, the vote went the other way:
Shane Scott, Alyssa Garza, Max Baker, Saul Gonzalez – show the raw data of the whole evaluation
Jude Prather, Jane Hughson, Mark Gleason – Just the summary.

Hour 4, 3/1/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 27: THIS IS WHY I BLOG.

Shane Scott and Saul Gonzales brought this agenda item up. Because of equity/poverty/other buzzwords, Shane Scott wants to reduce your water and wastewater bills. He thinks it’s crazy that it’s so high.

His proposal is to restructure the rate system. He says right now, you get the first 6000 gallons at a low price, and then tiered surcharges kicking in above that. Shane Scott wants you to get the first 8000 gallons at that same low price, and then pro-rated beyond that. THIS DOESN’T SAVE MOST PEOPLE MONEY. If you use 5000 gallons, you’ll get charged exactly the same! All this does is encourage a lot of people to use more water, because it’s free. (Maybe it helps big families, maybe, if they tend to use 6000-8000 gallons? They now get 1-2K gallons of water for free?) Shane Scott also wants to do something vague, similar, you know, for the wastewater rates.

First off, Shane Scott doesn’t even have the pricing structure right. According to the water guy:
Water rates: Base rate: $26.82 minimum.
Then $4.49 per 1000 gallons, up to 6000 gallons.
$7.86 per 1000 gallons after, up to 9000 gallons.
Then it goes to $9/1000 for the next tier, then $10.12/1000, then $11.24/1000, and then $13.48/1000 thereafter.

So you can imagine what Shane might mean – extend the $4.49 rate up to 8000 gallons. That would save a few people $6.42 per month, if they happen to already use exactly 8000 gallons per month. Good job, Shane.

Wastewater rates:
$27.88 per 1000 gallons, up to 2000 gallons.
$8.03 per 1000 gallons, thereafter.

The city uses a consultant to set prices that will cover costs and incentivize conservation. They don’t turn a profit.

Jude Prather makes the point that if you earn $1000, then $100 is a huge portion of your paycheck, whereas if you earn $10,000, it’s a negligible amount. What he’s trying to say is that flat taxes are regressive. This is very true. This is why sales taxes are problematic, but income taxes are better, and capital gains taxes and inheritance taxes are even better.

But water just isn’t a great context for that argument, because we’re talking about water. There’s a specific phrase for this: “tragedy of the commons”. Basically, if you have a pond, and too many people fish out of it, you’ll kill off the fish population and then nobody can use the pond anymore. When you have a natural resource and everyone partakes freely, you can wreck your natural resource really quickly. You have to drive consumption down and monitor what you can sustain.

Water needs to be priced to encourage conservation. Frankly, if I were setting the rates, I’d price the golf courses out of existence. But no one has consulted me on this.

Mayor Hughson says she’s all for lower rates, but how exactly are they going to pay for the water utility system and wastewater processing and the pipes and all the rest of it?

Jude Prather comes in sounding so correct that I thought it was the city water official at first. He says that people with huge water bills are watering their yards and filling up their pools, and that the real concern should be electric, and making sure that no one is going without air conditioning in the summer, when it can turn deadly for vulnerable people.

Mark Gleason also makes a lot of sense! His point is that city-run utilities are enormously complex and we should not make uninformed decisions. He also points out that it’s easy for someone to run up a $400 bill if they have a leak they don’t know about, or some extra family members staying with them, or they fall behind for a few months.

From there, Mayor Hughson and Alyssa Garza take the conversation over to the Lifeline Rate and the Utility Assistance Program, both which are so poorly advertised that those who need it have never heard of it. In fact, city council members – and your friendly marxist bloggers – don’t really know about such things, or how to direct someone to find it. The conversation seems to be coming to its natural conclusion: we need a concerted plan to strengthen the outreach effort for the Lifeline Rate and Utility Assistance Programs.

BUT WAIT. Shane Scott is not comfortable with his super dumb idea being molded into something reasonable! It’s not fair that relief only targets poor people! Rich people also need relief from their high water bills (under his plan which offers no relief, but encourages higher consumption).

He asserts that it is not so complex. Give him ten minutes and he could find all the savings we need. Mayor Hughson asks him why he didn’t come to his own agenda item prepared with a proposal then? He says he didn’t want to ram ideas down anyone’s throat. Dude, cut your losses and backpedal slowly away from this whole mess.

Saul Gonzales at leasts want to see the financial impact of the proposal. Everyone seems okay with looking at innovative ideas towards equity on water and wastewater rate setting.

They kick around other ideas: education, providing thermostats, mid-month notifications of your usage, and so on. Rebates from the Sustainability Committee for low-flow toilets and rain barrels. Finally it’s kicked over to staff to do some homework on the topic.

Shane Scott gets the last word. He wants to order staff: “Our customers want lower prices. Make it happen.” He is so mad that council can’t just march in and slash rates. And this is why I shout angrily at my computer while watching council meetings.

Finally: I was worried someone was going to suggest privatizing utilities to save money. Do not fall for this. This is a terrible idea. Here’s how it goes:
1. City gets bids from private companies showing wonderful cost savings.
2. Accept lowest bid.
3. City dismantles the department, lets people go, and generally loses the ability to return to the previous version.
4. Private company does a dreadfully shitty job and goes over budget.
5. Over time, bids escalate far more than the city’s costs would have.

Private companies want to turn a profit, which means charging more and delivering less. Don’t use private companies for public goods.

Hour 2, 3/1/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Items 17/18: Sewage Sludge Is Gross

There’s a self-storage place out on Old RR 12, right next to the shopping center with the Pita Shop. The shopping center and the self-storage place share a septic tank. The septic tank is old and degraded, and leaked sludge up and out onto the driveway of the people living next door.

Right now, this is the county’s problem, and the county hasn’t done much for the past four years. The self-storage people want to be annexed into the city so that they can get on city water, and get off the septic tank.

Max Baker proposes tabling this until the county can weigh in with their plan to fix the remaining situation with the shopping center.

Shane Scott points out that the applicant needs help as soon as possible, and shouldn’t be punished because the county drags its feet. He has an analogy about a roommate trying to get out of a situation with a bad roommate, which fits nicely.

Then Mark Gleason points out that either way, the longterm solution is for the shopping center to hook in to city water and waste, and so we should get going on that infrastructure, and not delay any further.

Look, the conservative guys are both right! Good job, guys! I agree.

In the end, it passes.

Hour 1, 3/1/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen comment: Pro-arts master plan, anti-Posey road development.

Item 15/16: Annexing and zoning a neighborhood adjacent to Trace.

This property is adjacent to Trace, and runs against a cemetery. The developers want to make a little neighborhood out of it. I was annoyed during the presentation, because Shannon Mattingly included statements like “They’re going to include an activity center,” and generally made it sound like a planned community with amenities. This is a zoning case – none of that stuff is binding. If you zone the land as CD-3, the developer can do anything allowed under CD-3. You should never trust any beautiful mock-ups or plush amenities unless they’re spelled out in a contract.

[As an aside: private neighborhood amenities are bad for a city. If you decrease the number of people that use public pools and facilities, your city will not invest as much in public pools and facilities, and the slow decay and disinvestment hurts the have-nots, not the haves. I don’t feel so strongly about apartment complex amenities, but neighborhood amenities rub me the wrong way.]

Back to this development: it runs adjacent to an old cemetery, which Mark Gleason helpfully tells us is known as Crying Baby Cemetery because so many children are buried there. So folks: this is straight out of your favorite haunted tale. He floats the idea that burials may extend beyond the perimeter of the cemetery. (Carol-Ann! Carol-Ann! She’s in the TV!)

The developer helpfully says that to the best of his knowledge, the grave sites are properly contained within the cemetery grounds. And there’ve been surveys. Mayor Hughson points out that surveys don’t detect underground caskets. Eventually everyone agrees that surely the row of old growth trees must be the boundary of the grave sites. (But don’t look at me when your swimming pool starts bubbling.)

Max Baker is concerned that these houses are stealth rentals. He wants them sold individually to San Martians, not sold off in bulk to an investment company who will rent them out. I bristled a bit at the implied anti-rental sentiment. (Max does turn up the that this developer is self-financed. He runs an investment group. On his Linked-In profile, he uses the unfortunate phrase “…focused on opportunistic real estate acquisitions”. Max alights on “opportunistic”, noting it’s generally cynical and maybe a touch greedy. Personally, I’m impressed with Max’s google-fu.) My guess is there won’t be a neighborhood pool and center.

Saul Gonzalez speaks up – many members of his family are buried in that cemetery, including his brother, and his uncle used to help run the place. So I do feel a little bad for the Poltergeist jokes above.

Eventually council settles on a development agreement, which will put a 15 foot buffer and a wall between the cemetery and the neighborhood. They’ll finalize it at the second reading, in two weeks.

So that seems to be that, for now… or is it?? (cue skeletal hands playing a janky keyboard.)

February 15th City Council Meeting

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Ooof, a six+ hour meeting. Those poor shmucks – no one is at their finest when it becomes an endurance session.

Citizen Comment: several people spoke on Item 23, about changing the supermajority required by Council to overturn P&Z. I have opinions on this, unsurprisingly.

Hours 1-3

So much discussion on the Lobbyist ordinance. I found this incredibly difficult to write up, so I coped by making it absurdly long.

Hour 4

Nothing too in-depth.

  • The proposed Sportsplex site, by the railroad tracks on Centerpoint, will be apartments instead.
  • Speed cushions (but not speed humps!) are coming to Franklin Street.
  • San Marcos has a lawyer to argue against Ryan Hartmann, who got fired from the PD after a long campaign by the surviving spouse of the person he killed while driving, along with Mano Amiga.

Hour 5

In which council debates whether it regrets letting P&Z run on a longer leash.

And that’s a wrap! Find city council video here, agenda packet and minutes here.

Hour Five

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 23:  Whether to remove the supermajority override of P&Z.

Currently, P&Z hears zoning cases and other cases and makes a decision. If the applicant is unhappy, they can appeal to city council. It takes a ¾ supermajority for council to reverse a p&z decision.  In practice, this means it has to be a 6-1 vote.  This issue on the table is whether council should be able to override P&Z with a simple majority.  If it only takes a normal majority vote to override P&Z, then P&Z is strictly advisory and has no real power. 

Shane Scott brought this issue to the table.  His position was that there is a lack of diversity in the P&Z candidates – socioeconomic, as well as their beliefs.   Given that Shane Scott doesn’t actually care about diversity, he just means that P&Z is too NIMBY for the developer community.

 Alyssa Garza seconded it.  She cares a lot about diversity, and feels that since the application process is deeply flawed and only brings in candidates who perpetuate the status quo, something needs to be done, and maybe this is it.

Here is my stance: Reducing the override from a supermajority to a majority is similar to the issue of states’ rights.  No one actually ever has a principled stand on states’ rights – it’s just a stand-in for whether you agree with the current federal government. Here, if you agree with P&Z more than council, you want to make it hard to overturn their votes. If you don’t, you don’t.

Now here is the thing: just 10 short years ago, P&Z was super developer-friendly.  They approved The Woods, The Retreat, and The Cottages in quick succession. The town got very pissed and threw the bums one, including Shane Scott and Jude Prather.  (I really, really loathe The Woods so much.)

Because of the process to get on P&Z, the lean of P&Z lags a few years behind the lean of Council.  The city threw out the developer-happy council, and then a few years later, P&Z became super NIMBY. Now P&Z is still very NIMBY, but council has reverted a bit.  My point is that it is not a foregone conclusion that P&Z is always heavily NIMBY.  However, it is always a privileged group of wealthier-than-average, whiter-than-average, and older-than-average residents.  Broadening the applicant pool is a good idea.

Briefly, the idea of single-member P&Z districts came up. This is also a good idea.

So where do I stand on changing the supermajority to a majority?  A supermajority requirement builds in a lag and sometimes pits a newer council against an older P&Z.  Sometimes elections tilt council a good direction and sometimes in a worse direction.  So there is a legitimate argument that the supermajority requirement keeps the whiplash in check and does actually provide a check-and-balance function.

But more importantly: beware of a legislative body that is clawing back power that it once gave away.  In general, they’re not going to give it away a second time.  

In the end, Council did not want to pursue this issue. Alyssa Garza is going to take the lead on measures to broaden the applicant pool, however.  Single-member districts, clear rubrics for evaluation of candidates, and a stipend are good ideas.