Category: Hour summaries

Hour 4, 2/1/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Here was the big puppy mill conversation. Spoiler: it was anti-climactic.

First, Shane Scott moved to deny, right out of the gate. If I were making Council Bingo, one square would be “Shane Scott moves to postpone or deny a good ordinance.” He did not get a second, so that died.

Once they were discussing the issue: it was very frustrating to listen to.

  • “We could be sued by Pick-a-pet!” (Shane Scott)
  • “Pick-a-pet creates jobs!” (Also Shane Scott)
  • “Pick-a-pet tried to collaborate with our animal shelter, who refused to talk to them. AND many people say our animal shelter is the Gestapo!” (Also Shane Scott, and yes he literally said “Gestapo”.)

Rebuttals:

  • “Our animal shelter was very nice to me when I adopted my cat.” (Mayor Hughson)
  • On the topic of partnering with the animal shelter, city staffer Greg Carr kind of made a mess of this answer. First he said that Pick-a-Pet would cherry-pick the best, most adoptable animals, and leave the shelter with the difficult pets.

    Jane Hughson basically said, “Huh? Come again?” and Carr backpedaled and conceded that the shelter would be happy to collaborate with Pick-a-Pet.

Then there was Mark Gleason. Oh Mark. In the Council Bingo, your square is “Mark Says ‘Verbiage’.”

  • Why don’t we add in that pet stores can source from any licensed breeder? Just that one word – licensed – would solve all my concerns!
  • What about the mom & pop breeders? This bill would mean that they could get in trouble!

The problem with Gleason is that both of these arguments are manifestly terrible. I believe he believes them. Fortunately, the rebuttals are made:

  • Puppy mills are all licensed. The USDA criterion for licensing allows for operations with thousands of dogs in cages. Stop it with your license fetish, Mark. (Both Greg Carr and Alyssa Garza make this point.)
  • Mom & pop breeders are breeders, not pet stores. Different legal definitions. (Chase Stapp sort of explains this point. It’s muddled.)

Max Baker was mostly right, but also frustrating. He made the correct points about puppy mills and rescue animals, but can’t resist saying, “There is nothing more bougie that owning a pure bred dog. Put your ego to the side and get a rescue dog. The whole industry should not exist.”

This lets Mark Gleason focus on that, the bourgieness of owning a pure bred. He can then talk about hunting dogs, and why you might want a specific breed for hunting water fowl, or what have you.

Max. You are just throwing red meat to people like Shane Scott and Mark Gleason, who can then clutch their pearls over their fear that you want to outlaw water fowl hunting dogs. (And for the record: it’s okay for pure bred dogs to exist and it’s not unethical to own one. Government should promote adoption of rescues and make it as easy and widespread as possible, but there’s not a strict need to eliminate pure bred dogs, provided they’re raised humanely. )

Finally: Alyssa Garza is the big winner in this discussion. She focused on the underlying issue: puppy mills are atrociously inhumane, and existing licensing allows them to operate. She is clear spoken and focuses on the most-correct argument.

Jane Hughson never did state her position, but suggests that the issue be referred to the newly form Animal Rights Commission, consisting of herself, Alyssa Garza, Shane Scott, and city staff. In the end, that’s what happens. I told you it was anticlimactic.

Hours 2-3, 2/1/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

A bunch of zoning cases.

  • One near the outlet malls, on the other side of 35, got postponed.
  • One near the high school got approved. Not sure what it is. Light industrial?
  • A low income housing complex for seniors in the Whisper tract PDD. Everyone hates the location, but it will bring in a ton of money to the San Marcos Housing Authority.

And then…we have the curious case of the narrow house on Lockhart St. This is inconsequential but symbolic. And so weird.

A year ago, the owner asked to build a little house on the lot and split it into two lots. P&Z approved, Council denied. (I did not see that meeting.) From what I gather, Saul Gonzalez rallied against it, saying he used to live in that neighborhood and could speak on behalf of the residents, who did not want it. Fine.

So now it comes back. It was a super feisty P&Z meeting, with Zach Sambrano speaking particularly forcefully in favor of the little house, squeezed onto a tiny plot. Namely, what exactly is the problem with this? But they voted it down 6-3.

To overturn P&Z, Council would need a supermajority of 6 votes. And Shane Scott recused himself, because he lives near there. So there was no way this was ever going to pass. But the discussion was bizarre.

Saul moved to deny. There were the usual points about changing the character of a neighborhood, and traffic.

After a couple comments, Alyssa Garza spoke up and said, “You all are speaking to different residents than I speak to. The neighborhood residents that I spoke to all said that they didn’t mind the house being built.”

This is where the conversation got so very weird. I’m looking at Saul Gonzalez, Mark Gleason, and Jane Hughson.

Saul basically said, “I know a lot of the residents. Unfortunately, they’ve passed away, and their children now live there. Their children said they don’t mind. But still, it’s a slippery slope.”

Mark Gleason and Jane Hughson both said some version of this: “I talked to some residents! They said they don’t care if it’s built. But they said it with cynicism and resignation in their voice. Therefore I’m discounting their words.”

This is just an amazing bit of NIMBY-projection where it doesn’t even exist! “There’s no way they meant what they said, so instead I’ll have to trust the deep longing I imagined in their voice, for heavy-handed NIMBY protectionist measures.” I was genuinely dumb-founded to hear this verbal fancy hot-stepping.

In the end, “Preserving the Uniformity of the Neighborhood” ended up being the holy grail to which we sacrificed this little house. Does one house really affect affordable housing? Not in the grand scheme of things, but it’s symbolic AF.

Voting to deny: Saul Gonzalez, Mayor Hughson, Mark Gleason, and Max Baker.
Voting to approve: Alyssa Garza and Jude Prather.

Hour 1, 2/1/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

There was a full hour of citizen comments, mostly on two topics:

  1. The proposed puppy mill ban. A lot of speakers both against and for the ban.

This is Item 17: Pet stores may only sell animals sourced from shelters and rescue operations.

Here are some basic implications of the ban:

  • If residents want a pure bred animal, they are supposed to buy directly from in-state breeders.
  • Pet stores can coordinate with shelters to have adoptable animals on site, but pet stores have to run their business model off of pet supplies.

It quickly turned into a referendum on Pick-a-Pet, a new pet store in the outlet mall. It sounds like their animals come straight from 1000+ puppy mill operations. Also: neither side – those in favor nor those opposed – was making the strongest arguments.

Speakers who want the ban mostly argued that these laws are widespread. All the major cities in Texas either have them, or are on their way to adopting them. There are state-wide laws in California and other states regulating the sourcing of pets in pet stores.

Pick-A-Pet was under existential threat. So they trotted out speaker after speaker, talking about their darling new pet. They love animals so much! They love their darling new purebred who has no health problems. (Actually, this is the strongest argument they could have made – an appeal to emotions and snuggles.)

The other argument the pro-Pick-a-Pet People made was that this ban would create a black market for pets. Listen: this argument applies to every single law. You’ll create a black market for stealing VCRs unless you legalize stealing VCRs! If the thing is bad, then the black market is a law enforcement problem. If the thing is good, keep it legal. (Nevertheless, the argument might have been persuasive to Council.)

The best arguments in favor of the ban are:

  • why puppy mills are awful. This is the best argument, and they should have dwelled here.
  • that people can buy pure bred animals directly from Texas breeders. All the animal lovers can still have happy households.

I did like the part where the Pick-a-Pet guy said that they follow all Texas laws and regulations, and then a non-profit person said “There are no Texas laws and regulations. There was one being considered, but it died in session.”

One other thought: all the organizations have sympathetic names, regardless of which side they were on. Kennel Club? Humane Society? It made the debate sound much more balanced than it is.

Stay tuned for the anticlimactic non-resolution in Hour 3.

2. There were maybe five speakers in favor of the Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan, and why we should continue our partnership. This is really important for the health of the river. The speakers focused on bank erosion down river from the falls at Cheatham Street, and how bad that is for species and the river. Hopefully this is a slam dunk.

Hours 1-2, 1/18/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

What made this meeting so short is the lack of public presentations. Mayor Hughson implied that the next meeting may be grueling, though.

First up, Citizen Comment:

  • Richard Amaya slams SMPD. Biden Bus, Ryan Hartman, other issues that have come up. (The very next day, actually, it was announced that Ryan Hartmann has been terminated. Activism making a difference.)
  • Darlene Starr speaks about the Animal Shelter and how dismally it’s being run, and how admin is driving away volunteers. This is the latest in a steady stream of speakers painting a totally dysfunctional picture of the Animal Shelter. It sounds demoralizing. I gather that we’re finally trying to hire a director, although the position has been vacant for over a year.

Non-consent Agenda

  • they tweaked the homestead exemption for disabled people and people 65 and over.
  • They created the Animal Services Committee, with Mayor Hughson, Shane Scott, and Alyssa Garza joining whichever community members are on it.
  • Packet meetings have a Do Not Resuscitate order placed on them. (No one but me can possibly be following this deathly dull story line.)

And then: Body Cameras. This was brought by Alyssa Garza, asking about the city policy around body cameras. Namely, what is it?

First, Chief Dandridge says there are state laws governing release of footage, and that SMPD follows those policies. It wasn’t clear to me if San Marcos has other, additional policies, or if the state code is the sum total.

Next, Chief Dandridge makes his main point: Police bodycam footage can’t be automatically released because it would taint all legal proceedings. It would make it very hard to seat a grand jury to get an indictment. To me, this didn’t land as quite as big a bombshell as he seemed to think it would land, because I immediately wanted to know, “Okay fine. What about after the trial is over?”

Dandridge answers that all footage is available, under FOIA, after all adjudication has ended. Fair enough.

Apparently Texas Municipal League is a resource everyone respects. Commissioner Garza has gone and found best practices for body camera footage release according to TML. She begins to go through it with Chief Dandridge, and then suggests that he just send the SMPD body camera footage policy over to council and she can read it for herself.

(Why couldn’t the policy have been included in the packet? Your guess is as good as mine.)

So that’s about where it wrapped up. Everyone professed themselves a little more informed and enlightened on body camera footage release policies. I’m interested to see if anything comes of the review of the official policy.

Post-Script: In Q&A from the press and public, LMC asked if the public has access to the body camera footage policy. Chief Dandridge says that it’s not up on their website, but that it can be FOIA’d.

Hour 2-3, 1/4/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 7 – Animal Advisory Committee

First off is this Animal Advisory Committee. For some background, there has been a steady drip of speakers over the past six months who have expressed grave concern over the vacuum of leadership at the Animal Shelter. The director position has been open for over a year. This item expands the committee’s scope. The committee just makes recommendations to City Council, though.

Immediately, Shane Scott moves to postpone this agenda item until March. It’s a weird move. He feels that this should wait until a director is hired, so that the new director can come in and forge a path.

If there was a new director starting in a week or two? Then sure. For a position which has been unfilled since October 2020? This makes no sense.

Anyway, postponement failed 6-1, and the expansion of the committee passed.

Item 22 – Setting the Agenda

The last 90 minutes of the meeting is occupied with this question of who sets the agenda for meetings. This gets into the weeds a bit. Basically, council meetings have a habit of going 6+ hours lately. They sometimes run until 2 or 3 am. It’s completely insane. (Frankly, I don’t understand why they don’t just meet weekly.)

I had a long, detailed post, and I deleted it for being ungodly boring. Setting the agenda is complicated and political. I am happy to share details if any of you want a long, boring read.

Hour 1+, 1/4/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Some of the citizen comments:
– In favor of a committee for animal services. (Which is on the agenda tonight. Spoiler: it passes.)
– Problems with SMPD: Namely, Chief Stapp’s complicity in the negligence during the Biden Bus emergency calls, and how we continue to employ him. We need SMPD oversight by external community members, instead of recycling the same individuals to guard the henhouse, so to speak.

Public Hearings:

1. There’s going to be a gas station at the corner of 123 and Clovis Barker. Eventually. This is just before you get to the McCarty overpass, heading south.

2. Renewing some low income tax credits for a housing complex (Champion’s Crossing), right at the entrance to Blanco Vista, at Yarrington Road. It’s been there for a long time, 156 apartments.


Max Baker points out that the income percentiles are based on Austin median income, not San Marcos median income. According to this, Austin median income for a family of 4 is $99K. And hooboy, those are not San Marcos numbers at all. Having apartments priced to be affordable at 40% of the median Austin income is just a regular San Marcos market rate, and yet the city is subsidizing this.

It passes unanimously. Baker basically holds his nose and votes to grandfather it in, but points out that new projects need to clear a higher bar.

3. Transportation Master Plan
Mostly they hashed these details out at the last meeting; see here. Mayor Hughson raised one last issue for discussion: reduction of driving lanes on Sessom and Craddock.

Shane Scott and Mark Gleason come out against this. Scott is pro-speed bumps in order to calm traffic, although the engineer says that Craddock and Sessom are busier thoroughfares than what you’d normally stick a speedbump on. Gleason points out that there already is a crushed granite path on Craddock, from Bishop to Old RR 12.

(Does it really extend all the way to Bishop? In my memory, the crushed granite path starts out strong on the Old 12, and then dribbles to extinction somewhere along the way. Google maps agrees with me! I win. The existing path appears to end at Ramona street, and then turn into a sidewalk till Archie, and then it peters out.)

Gleason also makes an impassioned plea to future growth. Won’t the ghost residents of tomorrow resent our bike lanes? Max Baker points out that they might also prefer the bike lanes.

Mayor Hughson asks the engineer, Richard Reynosa, some of the key questions: how much does it cost to put the bike lanes in? how reversible is the decision? what are the traffic studies showing?

Reynosa says: It’s just the cost of striping. It can easily be un-striped. The traffic studies show that these streets can handle being reduced to one lane. He points out that Sessom already has been reduced to one lane for the past year, due to construction, and will continue to be reduced for the next year.

Gleason makes another semi-nonsensical plea – what will we do in the case of natural disasters? If there is a tornado or a fire, aren’t we courting danger by reducing these roads to one lane? (Nobody responded with the obvious response: Bro, we’re just re-striping the lanes. Cars can drive over stripes, especially to flee a forest fire.) Whenever Gleason stops making sense, I start to wonder who is whispering in his ear.

Gleason makes a motion to keep Sessom and Craddock as they are.

Max Baker makes the appropriate arguments in favor: bike lanes can actually reduce the number of cars on the road. Traffic congestion is often due to speeding, and not the sheer quantity of cars on the road. Craddock in particular is like a 1950’s drag-racing avenue, just yearning to be sped down, with its wide unfettered lanes. It needs to be calmed.

Jane Hughson is persuaded mostly because this is such a cheap, easily reversible investment. Why not try it out and see how it does?

In the end, Gleason’s amendment fails:
Yes: Gleason, Scott, Gonzalez
No: Garza, Baker, Prather, Hughson

The vote on the entire transportation plan passes.
Yes: Everyone besides Shane Scott and Saul Gonzalez.
No: Those two.

Honestly, Saul Gonzalez plays his cards so close to the vest that it’s impossible to know what his game is. What didn’t he like? I have no idea!

Hours 2-3, 12/15/21

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

A couple small items here:

  • Eminent domain for two properties (or two parts of the same property?) involved in the Blanco Riverine Flood Mitigation project.

This is tricky. Eminent domain can be so exploitative, but once in a great while, it is needed for actual public safety. If public safety is truly on the line, then voting for it is more responsible. If there is another way to accomplish the goal, then voting against it is more responsible. Here we’re talking about flooding, so maybe this is a legitimate public safety issue. Eminent domain is obviously toxic in Texas, and it seemed like everyone was very uncomfortable with the idea. (Or at least performing discomfort.)

Mayor Hughson was clear that the city is still negotiating, and eminent domain may not ever be needed. My take: the city must feel that the property owner won’t ever negotiate until eminent domain is on the table. And then, once the threat of eminent domain is available, you’ve removed the property owner’s ability to freely enter or decline the contract.

In the end, everyone except for Max Baker and Alyssa Garza voted in favor of it. I just don’t know enough details to know if the city has worked hard enough to locate a workaround or not.

  • This one is kind of funny. Apparently the city owns the land under the Chamber of Commerce building to the Chamber, and charges them $1/year in rent. The Chamber built and owns the building on this land.

Then city’s Main Street office rents some space inside the Chamber building. The Chamber of Commerce turns around and charges the city $28,760/year in rent.

Max and Alyssa felt this was bullshit, or at least needed to be called out. I tend to agree. I don’t remember exactly how much money that we give to the Chamber, but my memory is that it’s on the order of 250K/year? They probably do help the business community, especially during Covid, but it’s hard not to suspect that business-types running a nonprofit may run it more like a business than a nonprofit.

The upshot: Max & Alyssa voted against it, and everyone else voted for it.

  • A number of items that received basically no discussion, and I don’t have enough context to evaluate: more Whisper tract things, a final vote on School Resource Officers, some Animal Advisory Committee details, and some Ethics Review Board disclosure details, and trying to locate some money for First Baptist NBC to compensate for the money that had gotten redirected PALS.

The Ethics Review Board one was regarding the financial disclosure forms that City Council and P&Z members have to fill out each year. The ERB wants more specificity. (Shane Scott balked, but it wasn’t clear that he was necessarily hiding anything. He’s generally contrarian when it comes to the ERB.)

Hour 1, 12/15/21

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Let’s discuss the Transportation Master Plan. The main issue here is bikes, and whether their lanes should be protected, shared, buffered, or sharrows. Here’s a nice graphic from here:

If I were to name them, I’d call them Safe, Scary, Pleasant, and Terrifying.

There was significant discussion on whether or not sharrows are terrifying. On the one side, it appears that many studies focus on the perceived safety of sharrows and not the actual safety of sharrows. It took me about two seconds of googling to find a study that clarified this point, though. So I’m calling shenanigans on the sharrows-advocates here.

Another point of contention: Barnes Drive and Monterrey Oaks. Both have the potential to be great biking places. Barnes Drive runs parallel to I-35 and can get bikers to their jobs at the outlet mall. Monterrey Oaks connects the neighborhood to Bouie elementary and the high school. The planning department pled that neither spot can handle a bike lane, and thus both of them have to be sharrows. The city council was pretty united in their polite skepticism.

Here’s my not-so-polite skepticism: wtf, planners? Neither of those roads are high speed thoroughfares, and both are plenty wide. The planners seemed tragically dedicated to the sanctity of turn lanes. It did not seem to occur to them that Bouie elementary might want a bike lane, and might even turn over some easement without a fight to make it happen. And Barnes Drive? The road that separates giant parking lots that are never full? This seems like the least difficult needle to thread. I’M ROLLING MY EYES.

City Council was great. Max Baker was the most outspoken proponent, but Shane Scott and Mayor Hughson also advocated forcefully for traffic calming measures and general bike safety improvements. Baker amended the plan to include both Barnes and Monterrey Oaks, and the city staff acknowledged that it wasn’t impossible. It would just take time and money. The amendments passed unanimously.

Anyway, this is not the final vote. This all comes up one more time. There was reasonably good turnout among the cycling community – maybe four or five speakers? Hopefully they keep mobilizing and advocating for Less Terrifying options.

Hour 4, 12/7/21

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 2: Shane Scott had pulled Item 2 from the consent agenda, on an interlocal agreement between the university and city on Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan.

Now, I clearly missed some workshop and they did not explain what was going on, so I’m using my context clues here. First Scott proposed postponing the agenda item until December, 2022. How is this not a jerk move? If it walks, talks, and quacks like a jerk move, then I mean…

Anyhow, nobody seconded his motion, and so he changed it to February 2022. At this point they had a meaningful conversation about some fence somewhere and some details, and it sounded like other councilmembers also had questions. So the postponement passed 5-1, with only Baker dissenting.

Item 24: A resolution against anti-semitism and hate crimes.

There really has been a disturbing amount of anti-semitism in these parts lately, as well as the chronic background static of anti-Black and anti-Hispanic racism, in different ways. This resolution is… nice? There’s nothing wrong with it? The councilmembers sort of had the giggles with how enthusiastically they were supporting this measure, which did not help it seem very substantial.

Item 28: Banning the sale of cats and dogs at pet stores.

This item was a discussion item, not a voting item. It sounds like the most promising outcome is to require that private venues source their cats and dogs from animal rescue shelters and humane societies.

Gleason was worried about the mom and pop breeders. That kind of drives me crazy – I suspect mom and pop breeders are quite capable of keeping animals in sadistic living standards. Not universally, but it’s not a group that I want to give a wholesale pass to, either.

Hour 2, 12/7/21

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

The bulk of this hour was spent on this little development, way out on Post Road. It looks like it’s roughly halfway to Five Mile Dam. The plan is for this to be a bunch of Tiny Homes and Tiny Duplexes, mostly for rent but maybe for sale. (The developer feels strongly that you not call these Tiny Houses, because he has some arcane specifications attached to that word. These are Micro Houses!)

Everyone was mostly fine with the plan. It’s way out of town. It would be better if it were easily accessible.

The proposal had no more than two unrelated people allowed in a rental unit. I hate this particular provision, and it’s all over the place in San Marcos. Ostensibly it’s about preventing an overflow of cars, or an overflow of students, and neither of those explanations hold up under scrutiny terribly well. All it does is:

  1. Enforce an outdated paradigm of who gets to live together, according to Society
  2. Make it more expensive to live and increase sprawl, if you were to actually abide by it
  3. But in fact, obviously no one worries too much about it. Which means it is only enforced arbitrarily, when someone has an axe to grind. It is a weapon to wield capriciously when there is an ulterior motive.

It only affects lower classes, and just perpetuates the stigma of living in cost-saving ways. It’s the worst.

Baker and Garza took issue with this, and made all the right points. Gleason made a nonsensical argument in favor of it: with houses so tiny, we need this rule to prevent too many people from cramming in! I will leave the disposal of this dumb point as an exercise for the reader.

The occupancy restriction was voted down, 7-1, and the development was approved.

One note: Why can’t something like this be mixed income? Why does it have to be uniformly for lower income community members, and then other developments are uniformly for UMC residents? I hate that. Developments should have housing options that span from the poor to the wealthy. Even when it occurs in San Marcos, like at La Cima, it’s done poorly, with a large apartment complex tacked on to the front end. Why not have duplexes and fourplexes and eightplexes scattered throughout?